Hello everyone,
Many of you may be familiar with references in PHP. Now i read
somewhere in the PHP manual that creating references can take longer
than copies. PHP5+ also seems to reference a bit different thant PHP4
did.
Here is some working example code:
<?php
class useless {
var $huge_array;
function __construct() {
$this->huge_array = array();
for ($i = 0; $i < 1024; $i++) $this->huge_array[] = $GLOBALS; //
fill ze array with copies of $GLOBALS array
return true;
}
function useless() {
return $this->__construct();
}
}
$time_start = microtime(true);
$test_obj = new useless();
$time_end = microtime(true);
$time = $time_end - $time_start;
echo "It took {$time} seconds without using the reference operator.\r\n";
unset($test_obj);
$time_start = microtime(true);
$test_obj =& new useless();
$time_end = microtime(true);
$time = $time_end - $time_start;
echo "It took {$time} seconds using the reference
operator.\r\n########## with obj2 ############\r\n";
$time_start = microtime(true);
$test_obj = new useless();
$obj2 = $test_obj;
$time_end = microtime(true);
$time = $time_end - $time_start;
echo "It took {$time} seconds without using the reference operator.\r\n";
unset($test_obj);
$time_start = microtime(true);
$test_obj =& new useless();
$obj2 =& $test_obj;
$time_end = microtime(true);
$time = $time_end - $time_start;
echo "It took {$time} seconds using the reference operator.\r\n";
?>
I tested the code in PHP 4.4.7 and in PHP 5.2.5 and the results were
pretty much the same. Using references speeds up the script!
Occasionally obj2-with-references took longer than all the others. But
i don't know if that's to be taken serious.
Now if i do not need a copy, isn't it smarter to use references instead?
I'm grateful for any ideas, thoughts or experiences
Yeti
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