PHP 5.4 incompatibility

http://php.net/manual/en/language.references.pass.php

PHP 5.3 doc says:
There is no reference sign on a function call - only on function definitions. Function definitions alone are enough to correctly pass the argument by reference. As of PHP 5.3.0, you will get a warning saying that "call-time pass-by-reference" is deprecated when you use & in foo(&$a);. 

PHP 5.4 throws a fatal error