Correct, garbage collector was added to PHP 5.3, prior to 5.3 PHP did only reference counting. PHP 5.3 was released in June of 2009. Here is a series of articl

Correct, garbage collector was added to PHP 5.3, prior to 5.3 PHP did only reference counting. PHP 5.3 was released in June of 2009. Here is a series of articles that describes it in detail https://www.php.net/manual/en/features.gc.php https://www.php.net/manual/en/features.gc.php Especially look at this example where the same script is executed with and without GC https://www.php.net/manual/en/features.gc.performance-considerations.php https://www.php.net/manual/en/features.gc.performance-consid...