file_exists() is too slow in PHP. Can anyone suggest a faster alternative?

Question

When displaying images on our website, we check if the file exists with a call to file_exists(). We fall back to a dummy image if the file was missing.

Howe

Answer 1

file_exists() is automatically cached by PHP. I don't think you'll find a faster function in PHP to check the existence of a file.

See this thread.