I don't see any problems with PHP. Loading a 185 Mb file works fine and your test script is also doing fine.

What is the server environment you are using (Apache, IIS).

Apache 1.3.9

Do you use Windows ? (because it works without problems 
on linux/unix)

Upgrade apache from 1.3.9 to 1.3.29 first, then see if the problem persists.

I reproduced the bug using easyphp 1.7 on a windows xp 
machine. It crashes apache !

We don't support third party PHP distributions.
Please give the feedback we requested.

THE PROBLEM IS VERY SERIOUS : it crashes the php engine 
on Windows XP. It is reproductible.

I've redonne some tests and it appears that the web 
server is nit the issue (launching the php.exe without 
any webserver exhibits the problem).

I've you have 4 different variables, then the max size 
of each will be 64/4 = 16MB of ram max. That means the 
total ram consumed by the script has to be lower than 
64MB

Faster code exhibiting the problem :

<?php
for ($i = 1; $i <= 1024; $i++) // I'm just making a 1024 
Byte string
{
$chunk .='a';
}

for ($i = 1; $i <= 66000; $i++) // if you use 65000 it 
works
{
$tablo[]=$chunk;
}
echo "c'est fini";

?>

Sorry, but your problem does not imply a bug in PHP itself.  For a
list of more appropriate places to ask for help using PHP, please
visit http://www.php.net/support.php as this bug system is not the
appropriate forum for asking support questions. 

Thank you for your interest in PHP.

My 512MB laptop running XP will allocate 800MB (probably as much as the page file size, if I pushed it).

C:\php4>php -r "$x = str_repeat('*', 128 * 1024 * 1024); echo 'Done';"
Done
C:\php4>php -r "$x = str_repeat('*', 400 * 1024 * 1024); echo 'Done';"
Done
C:\php4>php -r "$x = str_repeat('*', 600 * 1024 * 1024); echo 'Done';"
Done
C:\php4>php -r "$x = str_repeat('*', 800 * 1024 * 1024); echo 'Done';"
Done
C:\php4>php -r "$x = str_repeat('*', 1280 * 1024 * 1024); echo 'Done';"
FATAL:  emalloc():  Unable to allocate 1342177281 bytes

It works fine; no crashes.  You must have something wrong with your configuration; check your memory_limit and error_reporting settings and talk to someone on a support channel to discover the reason that you have problems with this.

As I just said, I retested it with PHP 4.3.6 ALONE 
(without any webserver) using the php.exe under windows 
XP.

So it's clearly a problem with PHP 4.3.6 itself

> wez

Ok perharps its works with str_repeat, but it doesn't 
seem to work with array.

Please check with my code. Maybe I badly worded it,; 
maybe it's just with arrays, check with my lateest code 
please

ah, this bug.

It is to do with the COW reference created by the engine
when you copy $chunk around.  Since it is the same chunk, the engine saves copying the 1MB and adds a reference to the variable.  The problem is that ZE1 has a limit of 64k references before it overflows and causes this problem.

It has nothing to do with memory usage.
It is a known bug in this database (although I couldn't find it just now; it *is* in here somewhere).

This problem will not be fixed in PHP 4.x, but has already been addressed in PHP 5.

Workaround: use $toto .= str_repeat('a', 1024) inside the main loop, as this returns unique strings on each iteration.

>The problemis that ZE1 has a limit of 64k references
> before it overflows and causes this problem.

Thanks, but does your hypothesis explains this :

- It works perfectly under Mac OS X.3 (did not test any 
other unix). So it seems to be windows only (do you 
agree).
- if I have 4 different arrays, I can only have  4x16K 
records and not 4x64K records. So it seems the total 
number of record of all arrays is limited to 16K (and 
not 64K x number of different arrays).
I did test it with 4 different arrays containing 10000 
records and its ok, with 20000 records in each it 
crashes.

Thanks for your insight

Sorry, it does not work on Mac OS X either !