What is the Maximum Length of a String in PHP?

The Maximum Length of a String in PHP

In PHP, the length of a string is limited by the available memory in the system. The maximum size of a string is platform-dependent, with 64-bit builds being able to handle arbitrarily large strings.

In PHP 5.x, strings were limited to 2³¹-1 bytes, as the length was stored in a signed 32-bit integer. However, this limitation has been removed in PHP 7.0.0.

Practical Considerations

While strings can be arbitrarily large in size, the total memory allocated for all variables in a single script execution is still limited by the memory_limit directive in php.ini. This limit is typically set to 128MB in PHP 5.2 and 8MB in earlier releases.

If the memory limit is not explicitly set in php.ini, the default value is used, which varies depending on the PHP binary's configuration. Setting the memory limit to -1 effectively disables this check and allows the script to use as much memory as possible.

Real-World Example

The following PHP script demonstrates the relationship between the memory limit and string size:

<code class="php">// Limit memory usage to 1MB
ini_set('memory_limit', 1024*1024);

// Initially, PHP seems to allocate 768KB for basic operation
printf("memory: %d\n", memory_get_usage(true));

// Allocate a string of 255KB
$str = str_repeat('a', 255*1024);
echo "Allocated string of 255KB\n";

// Now we have allocated all of the 1MB of memory allowed
printf("memory: %d\n", memory_get_usage(true));

// Attempting to allocate a string larger than the memory limit will cause a fatal error
$str = str_repeat('a', 256*1024);
echo "Allocated string of 256KB\n";
printf("memory: %d\n", memory_get_usage(true));</code>

When run, this script will output:

memory: 768000
Allocated string of 255KB
memory: 1023952

This demonstrates that the allocated memory reaches the limit once the string reaches 255KB. Attempting to allocate a larger string will result in a fatal error.

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