What are the potential advantages and disadvantages of using WeakRef compared to a custom implementation?

WeakRef is a built-in PHP class that allows you to create weak references to objects, which can be useful for implementing caching mechanisms or preventing memory leaks. Using WeakRef can help avoid circular references and ensure that objects are garbage collected when no longer needed. However, WeakRef has limitations such as not being able to access the object directly and requiring PHP 8 or higher. 

// Using WeakRef to create a weak reference to an object
$object = new stdClass();
$weakRef = WeakRef::create($object);

// Accessing the object through the weak reference
if ($weakRef->valid()) {
    $object = $weakRef->get();
    // Do something with the object
}

Keywords

WeakRef custom implementation advantages disadvantages PHP memory management

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