unset a element of an array via reference

Ok, better answer I think. In order to unset , you should get a reference to the container array, then unset the element within the array;

i.e.

$value = & $this->getFromArray('type.conf');unset  $value['host'];

References are not like hard-links. If you unset a reference, this will not unset the origin value.

<?php $a = 5;xdebug_debug_zval('a'); // a: (refcount=1, is_ref=0), int 5$b = &$a;xdebug_debug_zval('a'); // a: (refcount=2, is_ref=1), int 5xdebug_debug_zval('b'); // b: (refcount=2, is_ref=1), int 5unset($b);xdebug_debug_zval('a'); // a: (refcount=1, is_ref=0), int 5

Why not write a little Config class which abstracts the data (array)? Since objects are always passed by reference you won't need to handle this at your own.

class Config{    // ...}$config = new Config(array(    'db' => array(        'name' => 'mydatabase',        'user' => 'root',        'pass' => '12345',    )));$config->get('db.user');$config->set('db.user', 'newuser');$config->unset('db.user');//...

Here is my function for unsetting nested keys

public function unsetKey(string $dotSeparatedKey){    $keys = explode('.', $dotSeparatedKey);    $pointer = &$this->data;    $current = false; // just to make code sniffer happy    // we traverse all but the last key    while (($current = array_shift($keys)) && (count($keys) > 0)) {        // if some key is missing all the subkeys will be already unset        if (!array_key_exists($current, $pointer)) {            // is already unset somewhere along the way            return;        }        // set pointer to new, deeper level        // called for all but last key        $pointer = &$pointer[$current];    }    // handles empty input string    if ($current) {        // we finally unset what we wanted        unset($pointer[$current]);    }}