does PHP have a function to return the size of a data object?

[sneakyimp]

hi:

Is there any function within PHP which can tell you the approximate total size in bytes of a data object or array?

i'm writing a FLASH client that is going to query a PHP page. I understand FLASH doesn't perform well if you try to exchange more than about 64Kb at once. I'd like to configure my PHP routine to compile the data response and halt just under 60KB.

[tekky]

I dont see any existing functions... but you could go off the assumption that strings take 1 byte per character, and integers take 1 byte up to 255 in value (ie 256 would be 1 byte (8 bits) -- 65535 would be 2 bytes (16 bits))

and maybe work out a method from that....

[sneakyimp]

thanks for your response...

just out of curiosity, does PHP automatically allocate the minimum number of bytes for an integer?

also, a thought occurred to me after I posted. given an object, i could always do something like this:

$approx_size = strlen(serialize($my_object));

i think that might do it without too much overhead.