Use zval storage for php://memory stream
Nobody has claimed this yet.
- Dominant language
- C
- Stars
- 40.4k
- Forks
- 8.1k
- Avg merge
- 2d 13h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 96
Description
Description
The following code increases the peak memory usage of PHP twice:
$content = str_repeat('hello', 50000);
$h = fopen('php://memory', 'r+');
fwrite($h, $content);
The reason is that PHP cannot currently use copy-on-write when writing to the stream.
This is something that can be worked around by using a custom stream wrapper that keeps data in a zval, as done in e.g.
https://github.com/Nyholm/psr7/pull/230
Using this proved useful for strings longer than ~200K. For smaller strings, using a custom stream wrapper has a higher cost than the memcopy (see https://github.com/Nyholm/psr7/pull/241).
Could it be possible to improve php://memory (and possibly php://temp) to make it use a zval storage to benefit from copy-on-write?
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by tracing the php://memory stream implementation and compare its storage behavior with the custom zval-backed wrapper described in the issue. Determine how php://temp should be handled and how the roughly 200K size trade-off affects the design. Done means the stream benefits from copy-on-write without regressing smaller-string performance.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- c, php
- Domain
- backend, performance
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100