Question

Is there any performance advantage if I use relative paths as argument in file_get_contents()?

file_get_contents("../../mypage.php");

v/s

file_get_contents("http://.../mypage.php");

How is file_get_contents() handled internally?

Answer 1

If there is a performance advantage, it does not depend on php engine. Paths are processed by the web server you query.

But in this case there is going to be a performance advantage in the first case because you get the file from local fs, and in the second case you have to go through the whole network stack(http/tcp/ip) to get the response. Also first case will return php source and the second – a web page, processed by the php engine.

A clearer example:

file_get_contents('../../somefile.ext');

and

file_get_contents('/home/user/somefile.ext');

are going to be equally fast.