Unsetting References
When you unset the reference, you just break the binding between variable name and variable content. This does not mean that variable content will be destroyed. For example:
<?php $a = 1; $b =& $a; unset($a); ?>
Again, it might be useful to think about this as analogous to the Unix unlink call.
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https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.references.unset.php