What's Better At Freeing Memory With PHP: Unset() or $Var = Null

What's better at freeing memory with PHP: unset() or $var = null

It was mentioned in the unset manual's page in 2009:

unset() does just what its name says - unset a variable. It does not force immediate memory freeing. PHP's garbage collector will do it when it see fits - by intention as soon, as those CPU cycles aren't needed anyway, or as late as before the script would run out of memory, whatever occurs first.

If you are doing $whatever = null; then you are rewriting variable's data. You might get memory freed / shrunk faster, but it may steal CPU cycles from the code that truly needs them sooner, resulting in a longer overall execution time.

(Since 2013, that unset man page don't include that section anymore)

Note that until php5.3, if you have two objects in circular reference, such as in a parent-child relationship, calling unset() on the parent object will not free the memory used for the parent reference in the child object. (Nor will the memory be freed when the parent object is garbage-collected.) (bug 33595)

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The question "difference between unset and = null" details some differences:

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unset($a) also removes $a from the symbol table; for example:

$a = str_repeat('hello world ', 100);
unset($a);
var_dump($a);

Outputs:

Notice: Undefined variable: a in xxx
NULL

But when $a = null is used:

$a = str_repeat('hello world ', 100);
$a = null;
var_dump($a);

Outputs:

NULL

It seems that $a = null is a bit faster than its unset() counterpart: updating a symbol table entry appears to be faster than removing it.

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• when you try to use a non-existent (unset) variable, an error will be triggered and the value for the variable expression will be null. (Because, what else should PHP do? Every expression needs to result in some value.)
• A variable with null assigned to it is still a perfectly normal variable though.

the difference between unset and = null

An important difference between both methods is that unset($a) also removes $a from the symbol table; for example:

$a = str_repeat('hello world ', 100);
unset($a);
var_dump($a);

Outputs:

Notice: Undefined variable: a in xxx
NULL

But when $a = null is used:

$a = str_repeat('hello world ', 100);
$a = null;
var_dump($a);

Outputs:

NULL

I ran the code through a benchmark as well and found that $a = null is roughly 6% faster than its unset() counterpart. It seems that updating a symbol table entry is faster than removing it.

Addendum

The other difference (as seen in this small script) seems to be how much memory is restored after each call:

echo memory_get_usage(), PHP_EOL;
$a = str_repeat('hello world ', 100);
echo memory_get_usage(), PHP_EOL;
// EITHER unset($a); OR $a = null;
echo memory_get_usage(), PHP_EOL;

When using unset() all but 64 bytes of memory are given back, whereas $a = null; frees all but 272 bytes of memory. I don't have enough knowledge to know why there's a 208 bytes difference between both methods, but it's a difference nonetheless.

php - what's the benefit of unsetting variables?

Is it true that unsetting variables
doesn't actually decrease the memory
consumption during runtime?

Yep. From PHP.net:

unset() does just what it's name says
- unset a variable. It does not force immediate memory freeing. PHP's
garbage collector will do it when it
see fits - by intention as soon, as
those CPU cycles aren't needed anyway,
or as late as before the script would
run out of memory, whatever occurs
first.

If you are doing $whatever = null;
then you are rewriting variable's
data. You might get memory freed /
shrunk faster, but it may steal CPU
cycles from the code that truly needs
them sooner, resulting in a longer
overall execution time.

Regarding your other question:

And is there any reason to unset
variables apart from destroying
session varaibles for instance or for
scoping?

Not really, you pretty much summed it.

Differences between $var = null and unset($var)

unset does not force immediate memory freeing but leaves it for the gc. $var = null; however forces immediate memory release.

See example:

 // $a = NULL; (better I think)
 $a = 5;
 $b = & $a;
 $a = NULL;
 print "b $b "; // b 
 print(! isset($b)); // 1 
 ?>

It is also worthy to note that in the case of an array unset destroys the variable completely. i.e.:

<?php
$ar = array(1,2,3,4);
var_dump($ar);
echo "<br />";

unset($ar[2]);
var_dump($ar);
echo "<br />";

$ar[1] = null;
var_dump($ar);
?>

Returns the output:

array(4) { [0]=> int(1) [1]=> int(2) [2]=> int(3) [3]=> int(4) } 
array(3) { [0]=> int(1) [1]=> int(2) [3]=> int(4) } 
array(3) { [0]=> int(1) [1]=> NULL [3]=> int(4) }

What is difference between assigning NULL and unset?

As you can see below, both will behave pretty much the same for standard comparison operations.

Use unset() to free large objects / arrays that aren't used anymore but cannot be freed by the GC because of references still being held elsewhere.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   Expression     | gettype()  | empty()  | is_null()  | isset()  | boolean  |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| $x = "";         | string     | TRUE     | FALSE      | TRUE     | FALSE    |
| $x = null        | NULL       | TRUE     | TRUE       | FALSE    | FALSE    |
| var $x;          | NULL       | TRUE     | TRUE       | FALSE    | FALSE    |
| $x is undefined  | NULL       | TRUE     | TRUE       | FALSE    | FALSE    |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How important is it to unset variables in PHP?

See this example (and the article I linked below the question):

$x = str_repeat('x', 80000);
echo memory_get_usage() . "<br>\n";      // 120172
echo memory_get_peak_usage() . "<br>\n"; // 121248

$x = str_repeat('x', 80000);
echo memory_get_usage() . "<br>\n";      // 120172
echo memory_get_peak_usage() . "<br>\n"; // 201284

As you can see, at one point PHP had used up almost double the memory. This is because before assigning the 'x'-string to $x, PHP builds the new string in memory, while holding the previous variable in memory, too. This could have been prevented with unsetting $x.

Another example:

for ($i=0; $i<3; $i++) {
    $str = str_repeat("Hello", 10000);
    echo memory_get_peak_usage(), PHP_EOL;
}

This will output something like

375696
425824
425824

At the first iteration $str is still empty before assignment. On the second iteration $str will hold the generated string though. When str_repeat is then called for the second time, it will not immediately overwrite $str, but first create the string that is to be assigned in memory. So you end up with $str and the value it should be assigned. Double memory. If you unset $str, this will not happen:

for($i=0;$i<3;$i++) {
    $str = str_repeat("Hello", 10000);
    echo memory_get_peak_usage(), PHP_EOL;
    unset($str);
}

// outputs something like
375904
376016
376016

Does it matter? Well, the linked article sums it quite good with

This isn't critical, except when it is.

It doesn't hurt to unset your variables when you no longer need them. Maybe you are on a shared host and want to do some iterating over large datasets. If unsetting would prevent PHP from ending with Allowed memory size of XXXX bytes exhausted, then it's worth the tiny effort.

What should also be taken into account is, that even if the request lifetime is just a second, doubling the memory usage effectively halves the maximum amount of simultaneous requests that can be served. If you are nowhere close to the server's limit anyway, then who cares, but if you are, then a simple unset could save you the money for more RAM or an additional server.

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