Posted by The Natural Philosopher on 11/13/07 17:33

Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> mudge wrote:
>> On Nov 12, 9:27 am, "C. (http://symcbean.blogspot.com/)"
>> <colin.mckin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 12 Nov, 14:44, sai narasimha reddy <saidubb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Nov 12, 9:19 am, mudge <mud...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> In php documentation there is this note about mysqli_free_result():
>>>>> Note: You should always free your result with mysqli_free_result(),
>>>>> when your result object is not needed anymore.
>>>>> With the similar non-mysqli function there is this note:
>>>>> mysql_free_result() only needs to be called if you are concerned about
>>>>> how much memory is being used for queries that return large result
>>>>> sets. All associated result memory is automatically freed at the end
>>>>> of the script's execution.
>>>>> I'm just wondering why you need to free the result when using mysqli
>>>>> and not when you are using mysql_free_result().
>>>>> Does mysqli not automatically free resources when the php script
>>>>> execution finishes?
>>>> I think it does....when the execution of a page completes, all the
>>>> data members related to that page are freed.
>>> It may behave differently with persistent connections - mysqli pushes
>>> more functionality out into the binary lib.
>>>
>>> Is it such a big problem to do as they suggest?
>>>
>>> C.
>>
>> No, it is a point of understanding. I wish to understand, not follow.
>>
>>
>
> Actually, you should always call mysql_free_result() when through with
> the result set. Although the garbage collector will free the result
> when you leave the page, it does release MySQL resources sooner. And
> you really shouldn't depend on the garbage collector - it's just bad
> programming practice, IMHO.
>

that is highly arguable: when php exits, its not necessarily php that
cleans it all up. on a *nix platform all the memory allocated to the
process including the code space is freed anyway.

Delaying program close to use PHP'S internal garbage collector may
simply be a duplication of effort, and it probably does not have one
anyway. Why reinvent the wheel? I'll bet its straight call to the OS
free() function anyway.

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