Maximum PHP script size & performance

[jambo]

Hi,

I'm new to PHP and amazed at how good it is so far. I am curious how people deal with large projects and how it effects execution time.

I have planned an extensive site that I could, in theory, code in one script with content in either a database or flat files.

How do you handle big sites? (this may be 5000+ pages)

I am using a 2Ghz dedicated server with apache/linux/mySQL etc.. It seems very fast with small scripts, will it crawl when big scripts are used?

Thanks in advance for any pointers regarding using database vs flat file content, how to store and access large amounts of static data (database or in line arrays) etc..

Gary

[planetsim]

There are many things that can make a file excute slow.

1) Loops not ending. It doesnt even excute and will give you an error or never endling loading page.

2) Unnecessary code. Mainly code that just doesnt need to be there.

Now flat file vs Database

Depends. If you are only going to have a small amount of information, not many visitors than it maybe a good way of going about it. Otherwise a database would be a good idea.

Now ive seen some scripts that have been 5000lines long and have worked fairly well but it did excute quite slow.