Memory optimization in PHP array

Question

I\'m working with a large array which is a height map, 1024x1024 and of course, i\'m stuck with the memory limit. In my test machine i can increase the mem limit to 1gb if i

Answer 1

A little bit late to the party, but if you have a multidimensional array you can save a lot of RAM when you store the complete array as json.

$array = [];

$data = [];
$data["a"] = "hello";
$data["b"] = "world";

To store this array just use:

$array[] = json_encode($data);

instead of

$array[] = $data;

If you want to get the arrry back, just use something like:

$myData = json_decode($array[0], true);

I had a big array with 275.000 sets and saved about 36% RAM consumption.

EDIT: I found a more better way, when you zip the json string:

$array[] = gzencode(json_encode($data));

and unzip it when you need it:

$myData = json_decode(gzdecode($array[0], true));

This saved me nearly 75% of RAM peak usage.