Re: Discussion: Remove file statcache?
On 20.12.2024 at 20:26, Larry Garfield wrote:
> Background: PHP has a not-often-considered feature, the stat-cache. That is, the runtime
> caches the OS stat() call for files, so that subsequent reads on the same file can be faster.
> However, it's even less realized that it's a single-file cache. It literally only applies
> when you try to do two file-infomation operations on the same file in rapid succession, without any
> other file reads in between.
>
> There's been some discussion about making the cache disable-able, though the consensus now
> seems to be leaning toward getting rid of it outright:
>
> https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/17178
>
> Arnaud ran some quick benchmarks and found that disabling it has a less than 1% impact on
> Symfony and WordPress.
>
> https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/17178#issuecomment-2554323572
>
> Before we go any further, is there appetite among the voting population to remove it?
> clearstatcache() and similar functions would get stubbed out as no-ops, but otherwise we'd just
> hand the responsibility back to the OS where it belongs, which seems so far like it would be almost
> an unmeasurable performance difference but remove some surprise complexity.
>
> Would you support such a removal?
I still think the stat cache should be *deprecated* first. That gives
users a chance to reconsider calling multiple stat related functions
instead of doing a single stat() call. See my previous comment[1] for
some further details.
[1] <https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/5894#issuecomment-2546473892>
Christoph
Thread (25 messages)