PHP recursive function causing PHP to run out of memory?

Question

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 805306368 bytes exhausted (tried to
allocate 8192 bytes) in *directory* on line 6

This is the error that's getting thrown when I try and access the page running this script:

$root = '../public_html/';

function proccess($dir) {
    $items = scandir($dir);
    $result = array();
    foreach ($items as $item)
    {
        if (is_dir($item))
            $result[$item] = proccess($item);
        else
            array_push($result, $item);
    }
    return $result;
}

print_r(proccess($root));

What I'm trying to accomplish is to build an associative array representing the directory tree in my public_html directory on my server. I'm trying to create a graphical index for myself...mainly just for fun, but this has turned into a learning experience about recursion!

To my eye, this function looks fairly straightforward and I don't have that many files on my server...so unless I've accidentally created an infinite recursion loop, I don't understand why I'm running out of memory.

The loop logic: scan the root directory, then loop through the resulting array. If it finds another directory, set it's name as the key for the $result array and run proccess() again. If it finds a file, simply push the filename to the $result array.

By my eye, though I'm using different functions, isn't that function doing the EXACT same thing as mine, but using the DirectoryIterator object? I just tried it, and it worked actually...I don't understand why though...it looks identical to mine other than the fact that it's using DirectoryIterator... — Eric David Sartor
– Eric David Sartor, Commented Nov 2, 2016 at 3:52

I wrestled a bear once. · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-02 03:49:40Z

7

The problem is scandir also returns . and .., which mean "this directory" and "the parent directory", respectively. SSo you're scanning the same directory infinitely. Just filter those out..

foreach ($items as $item){
     if($item=="." || $item == "..") continue;
     // rest of the code here...
}

answered Nov 2, 2016 at 3:49

I wrestled a bear once.

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1 Comment

Eric David Sartor Over a year ago

Wow, yep, that was exactly it. The most frustrating thing is that I knew to filter those out, but because I didn't write this function, I forgot to add it back in. You're the real MVP.

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