Description:
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This text:
"Since PHP 5, new returns a reference automatically, so using =& in this context is deprecated and produces an E_STRICT message.
Note: Not using the & operator causes a copy of the object to be made."

... and following text is incorrect.  It was probably intended to refer to the way PHP 4 used to work (but even then is not really correct.)

Reproduce code:
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From manual page: language.references.whatdo
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http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.references.whatdo.php


Expected result:
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Issues:

1. "Since PHP 5, new returns a reference automatically"
What I think is correct: Since PHP 5, *in general* functions that return an object return it as an *object Id*. This works like what some other languages call a "reference", but in PHP the word "reference" refers to something more like an alias. (See: http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.references.php).

2. "Not using the & operator causes a copy of the object to be made."
I guess that was true in PHP 4.  In PHP 5, in the following code the plain "=" copies the object id:

$a1 = new A();
$a2 = $a1;
$a1->somemember = 3;
print $a2->somemember ;  // prints 3

... and consequently $a2-> accesses same object as $a1->.

3. The comments on $this are problematic. I think it's just saying the obvious, that $this operates on the particular object on which the member was invoked.

4. "Usually you want to have a single instance to work with, due to performance and memory consumption issues."  That seems like a red herring -- a programmer chooses to have one instance or several instances because they either want a single collection of data, or they want multiple similar-structured collections of data. If the programmer wanted a single instance, but accidentally created several, then that's a logical problem before it's a performance problem (and vice versa).

Hope that's all clear,

-- Graham