[4.2] Reintroduce workaround for arguments passed by reference

[joomdonation]

Pull Request for Issue # .

Summary of Changes

This PR revert the change introduced in PR #37178 because it causes some warnings when use HTMLHelper to call a helper method which need parameters passed by reference.

Testing Instructions

1. Use 4.2 nightly build
2. Open administrator/templates/atum/index.php , add two lines of code below somewhere in that file:

$children = [];
$list      = HTMLHelper::_('menu.treerecurse', 0, '', [], $children, 9999, 0, 0);

3. Access to administrator area of the site

Actual result BEFORE applying this Pull Request

Warnings message is displayed line below:

Warning
Parameter 4 to Joomla\CMS\HTML\Helpers\Menu::treerecurse() expected to be a reference, value given in
D:\www\joomla42\libraries\src\HTML\HTMLHelper.php
on line
289

Expected result AFTER applying this Pull Request

No warnings anymore.

[simbus82]

Joomla 4 doesn't support php 5 and pass by reference is deprecated since PHP 5. Why re-add some obsolete code in J4.2?

[joomdonation]

I'm unsure if the comment PHP 5.3 workaround here is correct. The fact is that some of our helper methods like https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/blob/4.1-dev/libraries/src/HTML/Helpers/Menu.php#L422 has parameter passed by reference. And without reverting the PR, calling these methods will cause warnings as I mentioned in PR description

You can try to test the code yourself to see the issue.

[richard67]

I'm unsure if the comment PHP 5.3 workaround here is correct.

@joomdonation Maybe change that comment to something like pass by reference workaround?

[joomdonation]

@richard67 I updated the comment. Hope it is more clear/accurate now.

[laoneo]

Then I would adjust the title as it is not a revert anymore.

[toivo]

I have tested this item ✅ successfully on 286ba9b

Tested successfully in Joomla 4.2.0-beta1-dev of 9 June in Wampserver 3.2.9 using PHP 8.0.15

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_{This comment was created with the J!Tracker Application at issues.joomla.org/tracker/joomla-cms/38000.}

[HLeithner]

Thanks