This is a problem where two features which I deem misfeatures together cause a greater problem. The first misfeature is that, if I understand correctly, php destroys _every_ reference-style variable when serialising them for session. Even turning them to normal and nice values would be better than nothing - tracking serialised variables is not that hard, is it?

The first misfeature would not cause much harm if I could evade using references altogether. However, in certain situations this is not the case. For example, if I have a deeply nested array from which I have to find a cell, based on some data (and the level of nesting may vary) and then assign a value to that cell, I have no choice but to use references because the $$ syntax does not work for arrays. You'd think that only passing existing values as references would leave them as values. But here comes the second misfeature. A clause such as

$arr = array( 'argh' );
$ref =& $arr[0];

actually turns $arr[0] into a reference.

There exists a workaround to this, which suggests that the misfeature could perhaps be corrected. It turns out that if I pass $arr[0] as a reference to a _function_ or _method_, it doesn't turn $arr[0] into a reference. So if I rewrite the loop that I use to dig into the array into a recursive function, I can have my arrays not destroyed when serialised.

Even so, these two features are very irritating. Could they perhaps be corrected?