Hi, with the introduction of magic methods in php5, you could have a catch-all function called __call($function, $args) to kick in as soon as no matching function was found for a call. This is great, as I can write one baseclass with default functionality. Secondly, in the main program I had something like this: $q = start_event_queue(); $result1 = $q->push(an_event); $result2 = $q->push(another_event); ... $q->fire_events(); The $result# where references to the actual results, so they didn't get a relevant value before fire_events is fired. This is great too. Thirdly, I wrapped above functionality so the events don't have to be defined .. even at runtime (yeah yeah, don't trip on this one ..). So I use the magic method __call to catch these. And here comes the problem... The magic method __call doesn't return by reference! (ARGG!) There's even a 4 year old bug report about it: http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=30959&edit=1 Does anyone have an idea how I could automagically remove that extra level, or how I could administer the perfect solution illustrated in 'secondly'. So, the question is: what the easiest way to administer this problem. -Kenny ps: djeezes, what an explanation. pps: the Francis/Stephane solution: "Actually, we need to rewrite php to basicly fit perl better" -- ================================================================== Kenny Billiau Web Developer Tel:+32 (0)9 331 36 95 fax:+32 (0)9 3313809 VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, Ghent University Technologiepark 927, 9052 Gent, BELGIUM kenny.billiau@ugent.be http://bioinformatics.psb.ugent.be ================================================================== "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato