Is there garbage collection in PHP?

Question

I know that in PHP you do not need to free memory. Is the garbage collector reached?

Answer 1

Yes, there is [here] a good article describing its pitfalls. In PHP> 5.3.0 there is also a gc_enable function.

Answer 2

PHP has a combination of garbage collection and reference counting. The latter is the main way to manage memory, while the garbage collector collects pieces that the reference count (circular links) skips. Prior to 5.3, php only had ref-counting, and even in 5.3 it still saves memory.

Answer 3

Yes. There is also session cleanup performed by the garbage collector.

Answer 4

since 5.3.0 there is support for garbage collection. please check out this very informative article at php.net http://php.net/manual/en/features.gc.php

Answer 5

Starting with 5.3.0, you can force garbage collection using the gc_collect_cycles function .