When PHP is done with the temporary LOB, it needs to tell Oracle to destroy it. If this isn't done, then the temporary LOB will hang around using DB space until the connection is closed. I just merged a fix worked on by Krishna Mohan and myself for bug 43497.

Example code is included showing two instances of its use - a normal use that frees the memory correctly and the other showing how to create the temporary lob to hold the data as needed.

When your code assigns to a parameter in a function/method, use a temporary variable instead. [...] It will make your code much more readable and prevents by-reference confusion and therefore big problems in the future.

His example code uses the illustration of calling a price() method in a class to modify the inputVal value based on other inputted information. His suggestion is to not work with the actual inputVal value passed in (so as to avoid issues if it happens to be passed my reference later), but to work with a temporary variable - $result - inside the method.