[RESOLVED] Should I unset all the variables I use?

RonB

Should I unset all the variables I use?

Does it free up memory? Because I don't want to hog more than I need. Thank you.

~Ron

rowanparker

When the script finishes then they will all be unset.
So unless you want to go on to other things in your script then it is pointless.

bradgrafelman

If you're using [man]file_get_contents/man to store several megabytes of data in a variable, then I'd say sure, unset() the variable after you're done working with it if the script has more to do.

Likewise when working with image resources; [man]imagedestroy/man can free up the memory used so that you can create more image resources for the next image to be processed.

Other than situations like that, rowan is right - there's really no point in unset()'ing variables in a script. If you're that worried about RAM usage, it's time to upgrade your server 😉

NogDog

I generally don't worry about it except in situations such as Brad mentioned, plus with large arrays. Also, if I execute a MySQL query that may have returned a lot of result data, I'll often do a mysql_free_result($resource_id) to free up that memory.

RonB

OK I'll unset the very big variables then, because I have a huge array. Thank you.