php Courses

Jul 1, 2021 · Backend Development

Understanding PHP 7.4 zval and zend_string Internals with GDB Debugging

This tutorial walks through PHP 7.4’s internal zend_string and zval structures, explains their role in binary‑safe strings and copy‑on‑write memory management, and demonstrates step‑by‑step debugging with GDB to inspect variable states and reference counts.