Copy on write and references are different concepts.  While the
former is transparent (aka "magic"), the latter is not, and it
seems to me that $returnAddressee contains references.  You can
verify that with

    var_dump($returnAddresse);

Cf. <https://3v4l.org/iaqnA>

No, $returnAddressee do not contain references. Its just json_decode() result.

Inside php since version 7.x, arrays are always stored by links, they are copied only when you try to change them. this is internal logic that is not visible to the end programmer

The problem is solved by the fact that I just copy the same value into it. PHP inside takes this as an attempt to change and then copies the array in memory.

Fix code:

$returnAddressee['address'] = $returnAddressee['address'];

Helps not only it, but any change in the array, of any other field.

I think that after the release of these optimizations in PHP, this was simply not taken into account in the SOAP module

var_dump:

array(4) {
  ["person_name"]=>
  string(29) "NAME"
  ["phone"]=>
  string(11) "+372123123123"
  ["email"]=>
  string(16) "sales@testcompany.com"
  ["address"]=>
  array(4) {
    ["postcode"]=>
    string(5) "12312"
    ["deliverypoint"]=>
    string(5) "Narva"
    ["country"]=>
    string(2) "EE"
    ["street"]=>
    string(13) "Test 21"
  }
}

For example, let's change not the address, but another variable, this also helped. And add call xdebug_debug_zval before and after call:

xdebug_debug_zval('returnAddressee');
$returnAddressee['person_name'] = $returnAddressee['person_name'];
xdebug_debug_zval('returnAddressee');

Before:

(refcount=4, is_ref=0)
array (size=4)
  'person_name' => (refcount=1, is_ref=0)string ',,,,,,

Here refcount=4

Call:

$returnAddressee['person_name'] = $returnAddressee['person_name'];

After

(refcount=1, is_ref=0)
array (size=4)
  'person_name' => (refcount=2, is_ref=0)string '.....

Here refcount=1

When the array changes, it becomes another array, this is what causes the problem

each pass of the foreach is the same zval, before trying to change it. and the soap library takes this as a reference, but it is not a reference.

Hmm, in php5, the behavior is generally differen ti need to research

Well, apparently ext/soap indeed not only encodes references as
multi-reference values, but also zvals with refcount > 1.  The
latter doesn't look right to me for arrays, because these are
value types in PHP, but not necessarily in other languages.

I think this is not obvious behavior. To avoid references - I have to clone the object in the code. Maybe it's better to change this logic?

Oh, not an object, an array, I'm sorry.

> Maybe it's better to change this logic?

Maybe, but I'm not sure.  I don't see a problem when both client
and server are implemented in PHP, but perhaps there are issues if
the server is implemented in, for instance, Java.  I'll leave that
for some SOAP expert to decide.

We are faced with the problem that the server does not support these refs, and there is no way to disable them, except for copying arrays.

I believe that this is not correct, that my code depends on the logic of the zval.

Yes, thank you

Maybe it would be enough to do it as not required option

> We are faced with the problem that the server does not support
> these refs,

Ah, so this is a duplicate of bug #42652.