A while ago I read somewhere about the (what I thought was a neat feature of PHP5) auto-references in PHP5.
Bottom line is that it's best to not self-define referencing because the engine outsmarts you!
Sara Golemon wrote a nice entry in her log here: http://blog.libssh2.org/index.php?/archives/51-Youre-being-lied-to..html.
Might not be entirely true (since there is a difference), but until I read deeper into this matter I'll take these informative words as is.
More internal information can be found here: http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/1024 Where Sara takes us into the internals of References in her tutorial "Extension Writing Part III: Resources".
