Re: Lamenting PHP's streaming support...

php-general@ can answer your question... -sterling On Sun, 01 Aug 2004 16:28:18 -0400, jtl_phpdotnet@spamex.com <jtl_phpdotnet@spamex.com> wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I'm trying to write some serious parsing applications in PHP. I find myself frequently > lamenting the 4GL-like support for buffered streams. I'd rather a full fledged streaming API > with stream handles (or objects) like you get in mature 3GL languages like C and Java. > > I'm making do with the single character-stream buffer available to me in the "output > buffer." I wrap this stream in classes that emulate distinct character streams by saving the > current output buffer, clearing the output buffer for the new virtual stream, and then restoring the > original output buffer when the virtual stream is closed. > > This works, but it costs in overhead and requires repeatedly creating string objects to store > old buffers and then rewriting those objects back to the output buffer. This is less than ideal > from both a performance standpoint and a complexity standpoint (and an increased potential for wierd > errors). > > I'm not too concerned about the performance issues of these virtual buffers because I can > architect the application so that it minimizes these switches. However, I find myself (so far) > unable to architect around another serious performance issue. > > I'm having to create a new string for each character sequence that I write to the output > buffer. I'd rather just copy the substring of the document being parsed directly to the output > buffer. Object creation is an expensive activity when thousands of objects needed to be created for > a single page hit. > > All I need to deal with this problem is a new PHP function: > > ob_write($string, $start, $length) > > This would write the characters in substr($string, $start, $length) to the output buffer > without creating an intermediate string object. > > Is there anything on the horizon that would give me the kind of streaming support I'm > looking for? > > Thanks for your help! > ~joe > > -- > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > > -- ..I....I..