👀 Views: 88 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-08-26

php performance filesystem recursion PHP

I've been researching this but I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me. I'm refactoring my project and Quick question that's been bugging me - I'm experiencing important performance optimization when recursively scanning large directories using `RecursiveDirectoryIterator` in PHP 8.1. When the directory contains thousands of files and subdirectories, the script takes an unexpectedly long time to complete and often exceeds the maximum execution time limit. I've tried adjusting the `max_execution_time` in my `php.ini`, but it still seems inefficient. Here's a simplified version of my code: ```php $dir = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator('/path/to/large/directory'); $iterator = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($dir); foreach ($iterator as $file) { if ($file->isFile()) { echo $file->getPathname() . "\n"; } } ``` I also attempted to use `FilesystemIterator` instead, thinking it might provide better performance: ```php $fi = new FilesystemIterator('/path/to/large/directory', FilesystemIterator::SKIP_DOTS); foreach ($fi as $file) { echo $file->getPathname() . "\n"; } ``` However, I noticed that although `FilesystemIterator` is faster for the top-level directory, it still slows down considerably when going deeper into the directory structure. I’m looking for advice on how to optimize this recursive scanning process. Are there any best practices or alternative methods to improve performance in PHP 8.1 that you could recommend? Any configuration settings that might help with this scenario would also be appreciated. Thank you! Is there a better approach? I'm working on a application that needs to handle this. Am I missing something obvious? I'm using Php latest in this project. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. This is my first time working with Php 3.11. Is there a simpler solution I'm overlooking? Could someone point me to the right documentation?