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My question is really simple, I fetch data from database and store them as variable for future use. After done working with the variables, is it cost-efficient to use the unset function of PHP to free up the memory? What I mean by ‘cost-efficient’ is whether is it worth calling the function multiple times in hope of clearing the memory to reduce up page load time.
As mentioned in unset
From here
"unset() does just what it’s name says – unset a variable. It does not force immediate memory freeing. PHP’s garbage collector will do it when it see fits – by intention as soon, as those CPU cycles aren’t needed anyway, or as late as before the script would run out of memory, whatever occurs first.
If you are doing $whatever = null; then you are rewriting variable’s data. You might get memory freed / shrunk faster, but it may steal CPU cycles from the code that truly needs them sooner, resulting in a longer overall execution time."