What's APC alternative to?

APC (as in http://us3.php.net开发者_JS百科/manual/en/book.apc.php) stands for Alternative PHP Cache. What is it alternative to - is there another, built-in caching framework in PHP?

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There is no built-in OP-Code or variable cache built in. But there are a number of alternatives...

I believe it was an alternative to the proprietary (and commercial) Zend Cache which was around in the late '90s and early 2000's. There are a number of different accelerators out there now (each with their own advantages and disadvantages), but in the early 2000's, the main one was Zend Cache. So I would assume (the time scales look right) that APC was meant to be an alternative to Zend Cache (an open source and free alternative)...

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Memcached is also widespread.

Also see this List of PHP accelerators which speak of:

• Alternative PHP Cache
• eAccelerator
• ionCube PHP Accelerator
• Turck MMCache
• XCache
• Nusphere PhpExpress
• Zend Accelerator
• Zend Platform
• Windows Cache Extension for PHP

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An alternative to not using one at all?

Seriously though, maybe as an alternative to eAccelerator and Xcache?

Also see: apc vs eaccelerator vs xcache

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OPcache is the alternative and it's available since PHP 5.5

http://php.net/manual/en/book.opcache.php