PHP speed when prepending large classes

Anon

Hi,
My website prepends lots of files with classes before each page call. I noticed php parses the whole class only when a new instance of an object is actually created. So I guess prepending lots of classes isn't really slowing down the system. Is this true?
Is php capable of remembering the classes between page calls? (So the classes don't need to be parsed each time)

thanks,
Huib

[deleted]

PHP always parses all the code you include.
(not just the code you actually use)

PHP remembers nothing inbetween page calls, because HTTP is stateless. None of the page calls have anything in common with the rest (although it may use the same script etc)

There are caching utilities out there who can keep parsed (compiled) version of the code in memory for re-use, but that is only really needed if you run a very very busy server.

Anon

Classes are great to keep code organized, yet when number of lines of code goes up - then performance will go down depending on the number of users.

One of my billing systems use a class that is over 4000 lines, and php deals with it nicely, because there are only few users at a time. If you have a site that has a lot of traffic -> using big classes will really slow it down.

Think about procedure: if client(browser) request a page from a php script, and this script includes a huge class, then all of this code has to be parsed, then op structure has to be built, and then it is executed - > takes time!!!

One of the solutions is to use zend cache of apc (alternative php cache). Zend cache is very expensive, yet apc is free (http://apc.communityconnect.com/). Great thing about caches is that code is stored in memory directly using either semaphors, or mmap (memory mapping facilities). It eliminates parsing and building of op structure. If you have a lot of code, then performance can double, triple or quadruple...