IE probably sees it as a blank page and pre-processes the doctype. You shouldn't be seeing anything in the source because its a PHP page and the code is processed on the server and then sends output to the browser.
As far as references. They more useful when your dealing with classes and objects. For example:
PHP Code:
/**
* Simple registry class
* By Pat Andrew 2007
*/
class Core {
private $store = array();
/**
* Register function, assign a name and pass a variable / object
* usage: Core::register('db', $db);
*/
public function register($name, & $obj) {
if(is_object($obj) || is_array($obj)) {
$this->store[$name] =& $obj;
} else {
$this->store[$name] = $obj;
}
}
/**
* Registry function, get the data for a given name
* usage: $db =& Core::registy('db');
*/
public function registry($name) {
if(isset($this->store[$name])) {
return $this->store[$name];
}
return false;
}
}