If I have a large object and assign another variable to that object, does php create two objects, or does it use a pointer internally?
for example:
<?php
$myObject = new Class_That_Will_Consume_Lots_Of_Memory();
$testObject = $myObject;
In this example will i be using 2 x the memory footprint of a Class_That_Will_Consume_Lots_Of_Memory instance or will it be 1 of those and a pointer?
The latter: one object and a pointer/reference (and in fact, here, two pointers/references, since the first is one as well).
To get a new object, use clone.
Objects in PHP5 are passed by reference, arrays and other types passing is based on Copy on Write technique:
$a = ['a'=>'b'];
$b = $a; // Here we used 1x memory
$b['x'] = 'y'; // Now it become 2x memory
You can use memory_get_usage() to debug memory usage.
