Is using ini_set in a script considered bad practice?

Question

I am doing a code review and found 2 places where

ini_set('memory_limit', '512M');

is used in a function. Is this ok? Somehow it doesnt seem right to me. Is this considered bad practice?

Thanks!

Answer 1

There's nothing wrong with it. Consider a scenario where memory_limit is globally set in PHP's ini file, and you want to override that setting only for one specific script/request to allow the operation to use more memory.

Calling ini_set in a PHP script will only have the effect while PHP executes that particular request.

Answer 2

you could alternatively wrap this function call in another function that is called, making it so that you can change the implementation if a better way comes along in the future, or if you want to update the memory limit globally with little effort

function setMemory($limit = '512M') {
    ini_set('memory_limit', $limit);
}