When moving from PHP‑FPM to long‑running processes like RoadRunner or Laravel queue workers, memory usage climbs and never drops, a pattern caused by PHP’s Zend memory manager block allocation, reference counting, and GC behavior, which can be mitigated by redesigning code and worker strategies.
This article explains the internal PHP7+ data structures such as _zval_struct, zend_value, and zend_string, detailing their fields, type definitions, memory layout, flexible array usage, and the associated allocation and release macros that enable efficient, binary‑safe string handling in the Zend Engine.
This article examines whether PHP's unset() function truly frees memory by debunking common myths, demonstrating verification methods, analyzing the Zend engine's memory manager, and presenting practical code examples that reveal how different variable types affect memory usage after unsetting.
This article examines recent rumors about PHP’s demise, reviews Zend’s leadership changes, presents market‑share data, and argues why PHP remains a viable choice for startups and small‑to‑medium enterprises despite criticism.
This article explains how to create a PHP extension function named array_concat that merges two arrays by concatenating string values for matching keys, detailing the required C code, Zend hash operations, parameter parsing, and example usage, providing a practical guide for PHP developers.
When a PHP process suddenly consumes near‑100% CPU, this guide shows how to locate the exact file, function and line causing the spike by inspecting Zend executor globals with GDB, using both manual commands and a ready‑made .gdbinit script.
