Use php's readfile() or redirect to display a image file?

Question

I\'ve a directory outside the webroot with images, css and javascripts.
These files often change.
I could write a script which locates the file, figures out the mime

Answer 1

How about a symbolic link directly to the file, not the entire directory? You could even make it a 'static' filename, and then let the web server do the modification timestamp check and caching, which would likely be much, much faster.

Benchmarks though, of course :)