PHP: Passing a large referenced array into a function is slow

slowref.md

PHP: Passing a large referenced array into a function is slow

This is interesting.

<?php 

define ('ITEMS', 1000);
define ('REPEAT', 10000);

// A function which does nothing
function foo($array) {}

// A largish array
$array = array_fill(0, ITEMS, 'whatever');

// An unused reference to the array
$reference = &$array;

// Start timer
$start = microtime(true);

// Call function which does nothing, pass array as param
for ($i=0; $i < REPEAT; $i++) {
    foo($array);
}

// End timer
$duration = microtime(true) - $start;
$duration = number_format($duration, 4);
echo "Duration: {$duration}s\n";

Running this code (on a reasonably fast server, PHP 5.5) yields:

Duration: 0.5552s

However, if you comment out the line which assigns the (unused) refence:

// $reference = &$array;

Things get much faster:

Duration: 0.0022s

Hi!

this is fully replicable in all PHP5 versions and there's no official PHP bug open.
We're facing the same strange behavior.

Did you get the reason for this behavior or a reasonable way to fix it?

We got the same also with standard php functions (like "current" and "key") and it's not possibile to simply add a "&" in the prototype.