Question

I’ve recently been given a task that involves uploading a zip file, storing it in a database as a blog, and then extracting and presenting the contents of that zip file when the client requests it.

I’ve got two approaches for this task: Using the exec command to execute the zip command native to the Linux OS the web server is running on, or using the ZipArchive class that comes with PHP.

• Which approach uses the least amount of memory?
• Which approach offers the most flexibility? W
• What are the major advantages of one approach
  over the other?

Answer 1

exec('zip') is way faster for large/many files. The built-in routines are always slower(due to many library calls & overhead. The system zip may have the advantage of using highly optimized routines. As a plus to the exec method, is the ease to change output formats from zip to rar, or 7zip or bzip etc…