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Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2024 13:26:41 -0600
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Subject: [PHP-DEV] Discussion: Remove file statcache?
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From: larry@garfieldtech.com ("Larry Garfield")

Background: PHP has a not-often-considered feature, the stat-cache.  That is, the runtime caches the OS stat() call for files, so that subsequent reads on the same file can be faster.  However, it's even less realized that it's a single-file cache.  It literally only applies when you try to do two file-infomation operations on the same file in rapid succession, without any other file reads in between.

For more info: https://tideways.com/profiler/blog/the-php-stat-cache-explained

Because it's so rarely relevant, in the cases it is relevant, it can be quite a surprise, and a surprise causing weird and hard to explain caching bugs in applications.

The cache also dates from 20 years ago, when Rasmus added it (and the realpath cache) in Yahoo's forked PHP 4, and then it got integrated into PHP 5.  However, hard drives are vastly faster than they were then, and operating systems are vastly more efficient than they were then.

There's been some discussion about making the cache disable-able, though the consensus now seems to be leaning toward getting rid of it outright:

https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/17178

Arnaud ran some quick benchmarks and found that disabling it has a less than 1% impact on Symfony and WordPress.

https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/17178#issuecomment-2554323572

Before we go any further, is there appetite among the voting population to remove it?  clearstatcache() and similar functions would get stubbed out as no-ops, but otherwise we'd just hand the responsibility back to the OS where it belongs, which seems so far like it would be almost an unmeasurable performance difference but remove some surprise complexity.

Would you support such a removal?
What additional data would you need to make the case for such removal?

-- 
  Larry Garfield
  larry@garfieldtech.com