Problems with Mail_Queue and PHP 7.1

Hello.

Since I upgraded to PHP 7.1 I'm experiencing a couple of issues:

First, WRT the tutorial (1), I get a synthax error at the following two 
lines:

>$mail_queue =& new Mail_Queue($db_options, $mail_options);
>...
>$mime =& new Mail_mime();

Substituting =& with = seems to solve. Is this correction ok?



Once I get past this, I get:
> PHP Fatal error:  Cannot unset $this in /usr/local/share/pear/Mail/Queue.php on line 269

Is it ok to comment this line?



TIA.
	


[1]
>  http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail-queue.mail-queue.tutorial.php