Absolute vs. relative paths

Question

If I use absolute paths, I can\'t move the whole directory to a new location. If I use relative paths, I can\'t move individual files to new locations.

What\'s the s

Answer 1

Absolute paths are better from a performance point of view when using an opcode cache or lots of require/include statement (although its only noticeable when you start to include hundreds of files, as might happen when using a framework like Zend/Symfony/etc).

With a relative path the opcode cache and php must work out the files realpath each time before it can work out if it already knows about the file and if it needs to load it again. PHP internally maintains a hashmap of files to file locations which is very quick as long it doesn't have to do the above calculation each time.