# \[PEAR\] Reference question

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/pear-reference-question/207994>\
**Category:** programming\
**Created:** [November 23, 2006, 6:35pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/pear-reference-question/207994 "2006-11-23T18:35:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ZephyrWest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/87869e/32.png) [@ZephyrWest](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/ZephyrWest)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2006, 6:35pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/pear-reference-question/207994/1 "2006-11-23T18:35:11Z")

</div>

I was reading through the PEAR docs and noticed that they assign by reference a lot. For example:

```php
$res =& $db->query('DELETE * FROM table1');

```

Why do they do that? It seems to work fine without the “&” operator.