Unexpected behaviour when running foreach across an array of objects in PHP

foreach-wierdness.php

<pre>
<?php

/*
after using foreach to iterate /by reference/ across an array containing objects,
then on the second foreach of the same array, 
the final member of the array gets overwritten by the previous
and c=b

if we don't iterate by reference on the first pass, then it doesn't happen
and c=c at the end

is this right?
*/

  $array = array(
    'a' => new stdClass(),
    'b' => new stdClass(),
    'c' => new stdClass(),
  );
  $array['a']->name = 'a';
  $array['b']->name = 'b';
  $array['c']->name = 'c';
  // by reference
  foreach ($array as $k => &$value) {
    print($k . ' is '. $value->name . "\n");
  }
  // no reference this time, but last member gets clobbered
  foreach ($array as $k => $value) {
    print($k . ' is '. $value->name . "\n");
  }

/*
a is a
b is b
c is c
a is a
b is b
c is b <---------------------
*/

// ok, let's try that again

  // reset the array
  $array = array(
    'a' => new stdClass(),
    'b' => new stdClass(),
    'c' => new stdClass(),
  );
  // some properties
  $array['a']->name = 'a';
  $array['b']->name = 'b';
  $array['c']->name = 'c';
  // no reference
  foreach ($array as $k => $value) {
    print($k . ' is '. $value->name . "\n");
  }
  // again, no reference; last member is OK
  foreach ($array as $k => $value) {
    print($k . ' is '. $value->name . "\n");
  }

/*
a is a
b is b
c is c
a is a
b is b
c is c <---------------------
*/

https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=49386 is an earlier bug report re the same behaviour. At http://php.net/manual/en/control-structures.foreach.php docs say,

• Warning: Reference of a $value and the last array element remain even after the foreach loop. It is recommended to destroy it by unset().

This is still fucked up behaviour.

Yeah, PHP has crappy variable scoping. OTOH, they'd probably make lexical scoping suck too.