Changing context

[rrsub]

I'm a big fan of clean code and I use HEREDOCS plenty. I always see code from others where the context is changed from HTML to PHP and vice versa multiple times in the script.

Maybe I'm testing this wrong but I decided to time 3 simple scripts and changing context is the fastest by my results.

Script 1 - Averages .256 of a second

<?PHP
for($i=1;$i<=100;$i++)
{
	for($j=1;$j<=100;$j++)	
	{
		?>Block <?PHP print $i;?> Number <?PHP print $j;?><br> <?PHP
	}
}
?>

Script 2 - Averages .358 of a second

<?PHP
for($i=1;$i<=100;$i++)
{
	for($j=1;$j<=100;$j++)	
	{
		print"Block $i Number $j<br>";
	}
}
?>

Script 3 - Averages .528 of a second

<?PHP
for($i=1;$i<=100;$i++)
{
	for($j=1;$j<=100;$j++)	
	{
		print <<<EOF
		
		Block $i Number $j<br>

EOF;
	}
}
?>

Am I doing something wrong or is changing context the performance way to go?

 

[sleipnir214]

I changed the script a little so that the script itself is logging its runtime using microtime(). As an example, here is your first script:

<?php
$begin = microtime(TRUE);
for ($i=1;$i<=100;$i++)
{
        for ($j=1;$j<=100;$j++)
        {
                ?>Block <?PHP print $i;?> Number <?php print $j;?><br><?php
        }
}
$end = microtime(TRUE);
error_log($end - $begin ."\n", 3, 'test1.log');
?>

I also created CGI versions of the scripts (running PHP as the command interpreter). An example version of your first script is:

#! /usr/local/bin/php
<?php
print "Content-type: text/html\r\n\r\n";
$begin = microtime(TRUE);
for ($i=1;$i<=100;$i++)
{
        for ($j=1;$j<=100;$j++)
        {
                ?>Block <?PHP print $i;?> Number <?php print $j;?><br><?php
        }
}
$end = microtime(TRUE);
error_log ($end - $begin ."\n", 3, 'test1.log');
?>

I ran each script in four different ways:[ul][li]on the command-line with output to /dev/null[/li][li] on the command-line with output to the console[/li][li]as a web script under PHP as an Apache module[/li][li]as a web script under PHP as a CGI script[/li][/ul]

I ran each script 25 times in each way.

On my LAMP (RH9/2.0.50/4.1.7/5.0.3) box, I have found that the code which does not context-switch is faster:

[tt] command-line command-line Apache Apache
(to /dev/null) (to console) module CGI

script 1 .45 .75 .18 2.19

script 2 .19 .30 .10 1.28

script 3 .11 .30 .10 .71[/tt]


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