title: What does PHP do with deprecated functions?
body: <p>Getting these errors "Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated..."</p>
  
  <p>While I know what deprecated function means, but I am not very clear that what PHP does to them? Still execute them as usual? So at this point for this function, does PHP silently assign memory location for the variable or still using reference pointer?</p>
  
  <p><em>EDIT</em> - thanks for the answers, I asked this question because we are using <code>adodb_lite</code> and the library has not corrected error.</p>