Re: [Zend Engine 2] Bumping PHP to support 8byte integers

On 23 Sep 2001, Stig Sæther Bakken wrote: > [Jeroen van Wolffelaar <jeroen@A-Eskwadraat.nl>] > > In PHP performance is IMHO a bit less important than in DBMS's. If > > you're after performance you shouldn't use a scripting language > > anyway :). > > Sorry for starting, but this is just nonsense. > > First of all, today PHP is a scripting language only by > categorization, technically it is no more so than Java. I thought a scripting language is differnt from a non-scripting language in that a scripting language will be compiled at runtime? True, java has a JIT-compiler (Just In Time). But I don't know much about this, so simply correct me if I'm wrong :-) > Second, performance is important for PHP. 4.0 beats lots of > competition because of its performance. We shouldn't even think of > jeopardizing that. Performance is important indeed. (originally I said: "perfomance is a bit less important _than in DBMS's_", and everybody knows that in DBMS's, performance is extremely important) I expressed myself a bit unhappy, I think - I'm not sure - that the performance impact of slower arithmetic etc on PHP-integers would be neglectible. String manipulation is much more expensive. Also, definitely not ALL integers in the C-code need to be converted to 64bit of course, only those which are (derived from) PHP variables. Most registers for example can remain 32bit. To name one example, the capacity of hashtable and thus max number of entries in it will remain expressed in 32bit integers. But there will be a lot of integers needing to be converted, and again, I don't know the performance inpact. If it are multiple percents, I think it's not an option. > When I hear this kind of reasoning from people who suggest core > changes, I stop listening. Please tell me you were kidding. Will this answer do? > - Stig > > Jeroen van Wolffelaar Jeroen@A-Eskwadraat.nl http://www.A-Eskwadraat.nl/~jeroen