patternphpMinor

What is the most memory efficient way to load big arrays into PHP script?

Submitted by: @import:stackexchange-codereview·Mar 10, 2026·

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scriptthearrayswhatintophpefficientwaybigmemory

Problem

I have a few big arrays stored in separate files that are included into PHP as and when they are required:

Array File:

Main Script:

I am not very sure how PHP utilizes memory, but I have this thought that some RAM is allocated to store the big array for each instance that the script is run. Since these arrays are static, could there be a better way of loading such arrays to achieve some memory savings?

Solution

I thought about this again. My comments are still valid, so including it in a php file is the cheapest way to get the array into your system and without a shared memory you will not reduce the total memory usage.

But maybe you can optimize it at an higher level of abstraction. Assuming that you always only need some countries/settings/localization in your loaded page and never all, you could split this array into multiple files.

countries[$key])) return $this->countries[$key];
    $firstCharacter=$key[0]
    include "country_".$firstCharacter.".php"; //similar to your file above
    $this->countries=$this->countries + $cty_arr;
    //some handling if still missing 
    //and return ...
}

Code Snippets

<?php
...
function countryCodeToName($key)
{
    if (isset($this->countries[$key])) return $this->countries[$key];
    $firstCharacter=$key[0]
    include "country_".$firstCharacter.".php"; //similar to your file above
    $this->countries=$this->countries + $cty_arr;
    //some handling if still missing 
    //and return ...
}

Context

StackExchange Code Review Q#25330, answer score: 2

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