PHP Memory limit exceeded

[Ben-Nes Yonatan <da@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I got a problem with uploading files which encounter the memory limit 
when their size is not even close to the memory limit itself, let me 
explain.

My server is as follows:
1. PHP 4.3.9
2. DB - Postgresql 7.4
3. Apache 1.3.26

Here is my code that i made for testing the problem (along the code i 
echoed the function memory_get_usage() to know how much memory was 
allocated already for the script):

$imagefile    =    $_FILES['imagefile']; // recieve the file
echo memory_get_usage().'<br />';    // 118592 memory bytes allocated
  
$data = pg_escape_bytea(`cat $imagefile[tmp_name]`);
echo memory_get_usage().'<br />';    // 5570280 memory bytes allocated

$data = "INSERT INTO test_files (bin_data, filename, filesize, filetype)
   VALUES ('$data', '$imagefile[name]', '$imagefile[size]', 
'$imagefile[type]')";   // creating the sql for the insert, i called the 
received value also $data cause i dont want to keep the previous $data 
(after all we want to save our precious memory no? :))
echo memory_get_usage().'<br />';    // 5570400 memory bytes allocated 
{changed from b4 only alittle}

if ( !$res = pg_query ($this->conn, $data) )  // try to insert the sql 
string
   return 'error';
else
   return 'gr8';
echo memory_get_usage().'<br />';    // 5570648 memory bytes allocated 
{again changed only alittle}


Now as far as i see the script needed about 5.5MB of memory to upload a 
file of 4.7MB but thats what so weird here... i receive the memory limit 
error even if the php.ini "memory_limit" is set to 16MB! {twice of the 
default of 8MB!}  at 32MB it works fine... but thats way too much..
I suspect that the problem is connected to the pg_query function itself 
but i didnt find what made it exactly...

Any ideas, knowledge or even just solutions ;) will be extremly helpful.

Thanks in advance,
Ben-Nes Yonatan