Automatic Return By Reference in PHP
<p>For some reason I have always assumed that most of the time a variable returned from a method would be returned by reference - after all on return; most methods would destroy the return value and it seems silly to make a copy, return it, then destroy the originals.</p>

<p>Does the above ever apply, or is it worth going through and making functions return by reference manually?  I have a few methods that often pass large amounts of data between themselves and if it is the case it would be a cheap way of getting some more performance out of them.</p>

<p>Thanks for any comments!</p>
