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Day: 18 February 2008

PHP: Making faster PHP scripts

Making the web has a couple of articles about how to make PHP scripts run faster and more efficiently. Checking the lists show I’m already doing quite a few of the items listed:

Page one

Multiple arguments with echo (i.e. using “,” instead of “.”)
I don’t currently do this, but it’s only 0.396% faster
Reduce function calls (i.e. find out the size of an array before a loop, not in the “for statement”)
I do do this, but not as much as I should – especially with a 54.095% difference!
Avoid using variables if they aren’t needed and unset them once you’ve finished with them
I try to do this, but there doesn’t appear (from the site) to be any speed penalties in not doing this.
Use single quotes (instead of double quotes – ” )
I’ve done this for ages as I knew PHP didn’t have to parse the string – but I didn’t know it was only a 0.696% speed difference.
str_replace() vs ereg_replace() and preg_replace()
I tend to use preg_replace instead of ereg_replace anyway, and I’m aware that using any sort of regular expressions is slow. Therefore I do try and use str_replace instead – after all, it’s a 59.224% saving in speed!