Bug #51267 [NEW]: Performance of serialize() is poor compared to json_encode()

From: Operating system: PHP version: 5.3.2 Package: Arrays related Bug Type: Bug Bug description:Performance of serialize() is poor compared to json_encode() Description: ------------ The performance of serialize() decreases if the data is deeply nested, eg. consists of array inside an array. Surprisingly, json_encode() is not affected by this issue, thus I'd say there should be some optimizations not used in serialize() serialize() performs great on arrays structured (key => val), but fails ion structs like array( array(key => val) ... ) Test script: --------------- Benchmark json_encode() vs. serialize() on the following data: $arr = array(); for($i = 0; $i < $num_size; $i++) { $arr[md5($i)] = array( sha1($i), SplFixedArray::fromArray( array_fill( 0, 10, hash('sha256', rand(0, $num_size)) ) ) ); } Expected result: ---------------- More or less the same same time comsumed. Actual result: -------------- json_encode() is >3 times faster than serialize(). This increases if the arrays nesting level increases. -- Edit bug report at http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=51267&edit=1 -- Try a snapshot (PHP 5.2): http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=trysnapshot52 Try a snapshot (PHP 5.3): http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=trysnapshot53 Try a snapshot (PHP 6.0): http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=trysnapshot60 Fixed in SVN: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=fixed Fixed in SVN and need be documented: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=needdocs Fixed in release: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=alreadyfixed Need backtrace: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=needtrace Need Reproduce Script: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=needscript Try newer version: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=oldversion Not developer issue: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=support Expected behavior: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=notwrong Not enough info: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=notenoughinfo Submitted twice: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=submittedtwice register_globals: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=globals PHP 4 support discontinued: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=php4 Daylight Savings: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=dst IIS Stability: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=isapi Install GNU Sed: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=gnused Floating point limitations: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=float No Zend Extensions: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=nozend MySQL Configuration Error: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=51267&r=mysqlcfg