I have a small patch (2k lines) that eliminates most
of
require_once() calls and uses require() in __autoload() handler.
Generally it makes things faster, as less require_once means less
stat(), as well as that might be more APC-friendly.
Not questioning anything, but out of interest: I don't understand how
this saves any stat()s? Surely multiple calls to require_once for the
same file still require only one stat().