Chapter 22 - Understanding PHP Internals ¶

Reference mismatches happen anytime a by-value variable is passed to a by-ref function argument, and the other way around.

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function foo($arg)
{
}

$a = "some var";

// This turns $a AND $b into references
$b = &$a;

// Reference mismatch
foo($a);

// Reference mismatch again
foo($b);

In this example, function foo() declares a by-value argument ($arg), but the foo($a) and foo($b) calls pass a reference created by line 8.

Because the function signature and the passed arguments mismatch, the PHP engine has to duplicate the variable value in memory, and will destroy it afterward if the function does not use the variable to send it to other function calls.

The performance impact depends on the type of the argument: duplicating an object is easy and fast, but big arrays or large strings are much slower to duplicate:

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function foo($data)
{
    echo "In function: ".memory_get_usage()."\n";
}

echo "Initial memory: ".memory_get_usage()."\n";

$r = range(1, 1024);

// Create a reference set
$r2 = &$r;

echo "Array created: ".memory_get_usage()."\n";

foo($r);

echo "End of function: ".memory_get_usage()."\n";

/*
Initial memory:  235,664
Array created:   383,592
In function:     482,080
End of function: 383,624
*/

The result of executing the above script is clear, passing a big array to the foo() function with a reference mismatch raises memory usage during the time of the function execution (from about 375Kb to 473Kb).

Removing the & when creating $r2 line 11 fixes the problem and memory stays stable when running the code again:

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/*
Initial memory:  235,592
Array created:   383,400
In function:     383,432
End of function: 383,432
*/

Using references is often used as a performance optimization, but this is not always the case. You can see in this example how creating a reference can increase memory usage significantly, and memory allocation has a direct impact on performance.

Unneeded memory increase is not always related to references. Have a look at this snippet of code:

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$a = range(1, 1024);
$b = $a;
echo memory_get_usage()."\n";

foreach ($a as $v) {
    if ($v == 1) {
        echo memory_get_usage()."\n";
    }
}

echo memory_get_usage()."\n" ;

/*
373,936
472,512
374,056
*/

No references around, but the foreach() loop consumes a significant amount of memory. Calling $b = $a is very fast as PHP uses copy-on-write (its refcount is incremented). But when foreach() receives $a, and because it accepts a by-value variable, it has to duplicate the value because it does not know if you are going to modify the iterated value inside the loop.

If the refcount was one, then no duplication would have to happen in the foreach loop and memory would not increase.

Now, have a look at the following snippet and try to guess if memory is going to increase within the foreach loop:

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$a = range(1, 1024);

// Create a reference set
$b = &$a;
echo memory_get_usage()."\n";

foreach ($a as $v) {
     if ($v == 1) {
        echo memory_get_usage()."\n";
     }
}

echo memory_get_usage()."\n";

If you think memory increases because of the reference set, you are wrong. Here are the numbers when running the code:

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/*
373,936
374,056
374,056
*/

PHP does not have to duplicate the variable because the content is the same for all references; the refcount does not even matter.

This example demonstrates how guessing PHP behavior can be quite hard without understanding how it works. Learning more about PHP references is a good place to start your lessons.

A dynamic call occurs when the function name is stored in a variable:

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$a = 'foo';

$a();

Most PHP developers know that this is bad for performance. For regular function calls, PHP computes a string hash at compilation, which is then used to lookup the function at runtime. But for dynamic calls, PHP is forced to make the same computation at runtime. Moreover, functions being case insensitive, the engine is also forced to strtolower() the function name each time you call it.

A few calls do not make a difference, but many calls in a recursive function or in a loop can have a significant performance impact.

Even for regular function calls, PHP might not optimize the call:

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foo();

function foo()
{
}

Defining a function after using it is perfectly valid, but when the compiler deals with the foo() function call, it knows nothing about the foo() definition as it is not declared yet, so it generates OPCodes that force the runtime engine to resolve the function call (look it up in a hashtable), something that can be prevented by moving the function definition above the function call.

Note that OPcache automatically optimizes this case for you.

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$a = function () {
};

$a->__invoke();

Every time a PHP script tries to access a file, a directory, or a link, the operating system must resolve its realpath via the lstat() system call. This call is fast, but it involves a context switch with the kernel.

PHP will cache up to 16k of realpath accesses by default, but this cache size is too small for PHP applications that are composed of thousands of files and directories. You can increase the cache size by setting the realpath_cache_size ini setting in php.ini.

But instead of guessing the best value, configure a high value first (1Mb), use realpath_cache_size() at the end of your application to see how much cache is used by your application, and adjust the php.ini value accordingly.

PHP 7 has been rewritten with performance in mind. A lot of work has been done to reduce memory allocations and memory usage. One such example is the new PHP 7 "packed array."

When using contiguous integer keys, PHP7 packs the array in memory, to make it consume less:

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$m = memory_get_usage();

// Create a packed array of keys from 1 to 1024
$a = range(1, 1024);

echo memory_get_usage() - $m;

PHP 5.6 shows a memory usage of about 280Kb for this script, but under PHP 7, memory usage is about 30Kb, which is roughly ten times less (OPcache optimizes it even more).

When keys are not integers or contiguous, memory usage rises significantly:

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$m = memory_get_usage();

// Create a packed array of keys from 1 to 1024
$a = range(1, 1024);

// Break the packed array
$a['a'] = 8;

echo memory_get_usage() - $m;

On the example above, the array in PHP 7 now uses about 70Kb of memory, which is more than double what the packed array uses.

As demonstrated in this chapter, knowing how PHP works under the hood helps understand PHP code performance. Don't draw conclusions too fast though; measure first.