Discussion on array_str_contains() RFC and performance benchmarking methodology

‪2026年9月10日(木) 10:07 ‫سپهر محمودی‬‎ sepehrphpr@gmail.com:‬

Hi everyone,

I hope you're all having a great week.

I’ve been following the discussions and recent feedback regarding the array_str_contains() RFC closely. Performance and speed comparisons have come up as a key point, especially around whether a dedicated internal C implementation provides sufficient value compared to a userland foreach loop.

I'd love to open up a constructive and transparent discussion around the benchmarking methodology we're using here. Some of the initial numbers shared recently don't seem to reflect real-world scenarios or different data profiles (like varying array sizes, early exits vs worst-case lookups, UTF-8 strings, and compiler optimization flags like -O2 / -O3).

Before drawing final conclusions on performance, I think it would be great if we could align on:

1. The exact benchmark scripts and test datasets we should use to evaluate this fairly.
2. The compilation environment and flags used for generating these metrics.
3. Where the potential overhead in the current C implementation is coming from and how we can optimize it together.

My goal has always been to make PHP more expressive and efficient for everyday developers. I welcome any suggestions, insights, or benchmark reproductions from the community so we can evaluate this RFC based on solid, agreed-upon data.

Thanks for your time and feedback!

Best regards,
Sepehr

Hi Internals

For your reference, I have attached the benchmark diff files. (commit
hash is 4982bf45f4786faaa198558dd619f8a4d59e25f0)

• .diff
• .exp
• .log
• .out
• .php
• .phpt
• .sh

I can not find definite improve performance.
(My PC: WSL Ubuntu 24.04, Ryzen 7 7735HS, 32GB RAM)

I don't familiar with Zend Engine's performance, However I think
function's performance improvement is limited.

Regards
Yuya

--

Yuya Hamada (tekimen)

• https://tekitoh-memdhoi.info
• https://github.com/youkidearitai