You may see PHP code snippets that have an ampersand, ‘&’, preceding a variable like &$examplevar.
So, what does it do? It sets up a reference to the original variable instead of copying it’s value.
Exemple:
$orig = “something 1”;
$reference = &$orig;
echo $reference  // will output “something 1”
Now if we change the $orig with something else
$orig = “something 2”;
echo $reference // will output “something 2”