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

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