PHP include(): File size & performance

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There will be a difference, between a 200KB and a 20KB file… But you will probably not notice it : a 200KB file is not that big — and you generally use a lot of files that are not “small”, when you’re building a big application.

There are two things that take time, when you’re loading a .php file :

  • The PHP source code is “compiled” to “opcodes” — that’s quite equivalent to JAVA bytecode
    • This is done each time a PHP file is included, by default
    • But, using some opcode cache like APC, those opcodes can be kept in memory, and this compilation stuff not done each time anymore — which is great : it’ll mean less CPU used, as the compilation will not be done anymore (it’ll be done only once in a while).
  • The opcodes are executed
    • Depending on what you script contains, this can take some time, or not :
    • If the file only contain functions or classes definitions, this will not take much time : nothing will get executed.
    • If the file contains instructions, it’ll take more time ^^

As a sidnote : in a general situation, you’ll gain a lot more time/cpu/resources optimizing your SQL queries, or adding some caching mecanism, than thinking about that kind of stuff.

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