array count

Hi all, Following code, $num = count($array); for ($i = 0; $i < $num; $i++) { ... } runs significantly fater than following code, if $array contains more than 5000 elements. for ($i = 0; $i < count($array); $i++) { ... } I thought that count() must walk through the array to number how many elements it has. But the PHP4(zend) doesn't do that walk, it just returns the number of elements directly. zend_hash.c: return ht->nNumOfElements; Am I wrong? Is it interpreting overhead, than makes the difference between the two codes above? Note that following code runs faster enough, for ($i = 0; $i < $num; $i++) { $dummy = count(array()); // dummay, do nothing but // call meaningless count() ... } In this code, the interpreting overhead is same as the second code above. --KIM Hiongun.