PHP function to return a reference a variable

[Ellusive]

I'm trying to write a function that will return a reference to a PDO object. The reason for wanting a reference is if, for some reason, the PDO object gets called twice in one page load, it will just return the same object rather than initializing a new one. This isn't silly, is it? :/\[code\]function &getPDO(){ var $pdo; if (!$pdo) { $pdo = new PDO... return $pdo; } else { return &pdo; }}\[/code\]Something like that