[PHP-DEV] [proposal] max_execution_time to a negative number

Mailing Lists php.internals
1

Hello internals,

It has come to our attention that max execution time can be set to a
negative number, even set_time_limit will happily accept a negative
number without error (except when using zend_max_execution_timers in
zts mode).

I couldn't find, in the docs, how to properly treat a negative number.
I think this may need an RFC to codify how negative numbers should be
treated. There are three possibilities:

1. Leave it undefined
2. Treat it as zero (unlimited)
3. Fatal error

Ideally, we would go with (2) in 8.4 along with a deprecation warning,
and then (3) in 9.0.

What do you think?

Robert Landers
Software Engineer
Utrecht NL

2

According to “man 2 setitimer”, the same error should happen on Linux even without zend_max_execution_timer: https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/2079da0158bc91fff4edd85ac66c89b40c4faf3a/Zend/zend_execute_API.c#L1566

A C error will also occur if the value is superior to 999,999,999.

We should at least prevent the C error in such cases. I proposed a patch normalizing these values to 0: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/13942
It’s still better than the current situation, and can still be considered as “undefined” until the RFC is voted.