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);
?>
won't unset $b, just $a.

Again, it might be useful to think about this as analogous to the Unix unlink call.