foreach, assigning to a reference, and E_NOTICE

Hi, A week or two ago, a colleague asked me about a strange behaviour he experienced, with seemingly-duplicate data within a foreach block. Upon further examination, we determined that this was caused by assigning to a referenced variable: <?php $i = array('zero','one','two'); foreach ($i AS &$j) {} foreach ($i AS $j) { echo $j . " "; } ?> (Output is: "zero one one") I asked around about this, and was given the technical explanation (see http://sean.caedmon.net/notsoweird.phps if you're curious), which cleared it up. However, upon further discussion, a number of us agreed that it would be pertinent to raise an E_NOTICE when foreach assigns to a pre-existing reference target. Certainly, the behaviour demonstrated above is non-obvious, and contrary to the normal "PHP way" (simplicity). Developers, at least in my opinion, don't expect foreach to WRITE to the iterated array. Technical explanation aside (yes, we realize that this is "normal" behaviour, as demonstrated in the unroll), I believe this represents a usability problem. Can we throw an E_NOTICE when foreach targets a reference? (The other option we kicked around was implicitly unset()ing the target variable before the first iteration, but this was deemed "too magical".) If so, when? HEAD only? I'd like to see it in 5.2 as well, if that ever exists, but I agree that it's too late for 5.1. S