What is the & prefix in PHP?
<blockquote>
  <p><strong>Possible Duplicate:</strong><br>
  <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3737139/reference-what-does-this-symbol-mean-in-php">Reference - What does this symbol mean in PHP?</a>  </p>
</blockquote>



<p>Google failed me again.</p>

<p>Third line of the following code, works ok on localhost but returns an error on my hosting server. What does the &amp; prefix mean and why is it returning an error on my hosting server?</p>

<pre><code> function add_real_escape_string($value) {
     if (is_array($value)) {
         foreach($value as &amp;$item) {
             $item = add_real_escape_string($item);
         }
     } else {
        if (get_magic_quotes_gpc()) {
            $value = stripslashes($value);
        }
        $value = mysql_real_escape_string($value);
    }
    return $value;
}
</code></pre>

<p>The error returned is:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '&amp;', expecting T_VARIABLE or '$' in init.php on line 345</p>
