[php-src] Issue #22175: Assertion failure at Zend/zend_vm_execute.h `ZEND_DO_ICALL_SPEC_RETVAL_UNUSED_HANDLER

[email protected] (YuanchengJiang) Fri, 29 May 2026 03:13:01 +0000
Newsgroups php.bugs
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Issue: https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/22175
Author: YuanchengJiang

### Description

The following code:

```php
<?php
try {
class foo {
public function &b() {
}
}
$foo = new foo;
$a = 'b';
try { zend_call_method_if_exists($foo,$a,$a); } catch (\Throwable $e) {};
} catch (\Throwable $_ffl_e) {}
```

Resulted in this output:
```
php: Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:1334: const zend_op *ZEND_DO_ICALL_SPEC_RETVAL_UNUSED_HANDLER(zend_execute_data *, const zend_op *): Assertion `(call->func->common.fn_flags & (1 << 12)) ? (zval_get_type(&(*(ret))) == 10) : !(zval_get_type(&(*(ret))) == 10)' failed.
Aborted (core dumped)
```

To reproduce:
```
/home/fuzz/WorkSpace/fusion-fuzz/projects/php/php-src/sapi/cli/php  ./test.php
```

Commit:
```
3447c58de1002a2c0f831c6df0407cc835f5e96f
```

Configurations:
```
CC="clang-12" CXX="clang++-12" CFLAGS="-DZEND_VERIFY_TYPE_INFERENCE" CXXFLAGS="-DZEND_VERIFY_TYPE_INFERENCE" ./configure --enable-debug --enable-address-sanitizer --enable-undefined-sanitizer --enable-re2c-cgoto --enable-fpm --enable-litespeed --enable-phpdbg-debug --enable-zts --enable-bcmath --enable-calendar --enable-dba --enable-dl-test --enable-exif --enable-ftp --enable-gd --enable-gd-jis-conv --enable-mbstring --enable-pcntl --enable-shmop --enable-soap --enable-sockets --enable-sysvmsg --enable-zend-test --with-zlib --with-bz2 --with-curl --with-enchant --with-gettext --with-gmp --with-mhash --with-ldap --with-libedit --with-readline --with-snmp --with-sodium --with-xsl --with-zip --with-mysqli --with-pdo-mysql --with-pdo-pgsql --with-pgsql --with-sqlite3 --with-pdo-sqlite --with-webp --with-jpeg --with-freetype --enable-sigchild --with-readline --with-pcre-jit --with-iconv
```

Operating System:
```
Ubuntu 20.04 Host, Docker 0599jiangyc/flowfusion:latest
```

*This bug was found by [fusion-fuzz](https://github.com/fusion-fuzz/fusion-fuzz)*


### PHP Version

```plain
nightly
```

### Operating System

_No response_