#23721 [Opn]: TRUE and FALSE constants slower than keywords in previous versions

ID: 23721 Updated by: philip@php.net Reported By: max at fuck dot org Status: Open Bug Type: Documentation problem Operating System: FreeBSD PHP Version: 4.3.1 New Comment: PHP groupees sometimes mention: a) ++$i is faster than $i++ b) 'foo' is faster than "foo" c) echo is faster than print d) str_* is faster than regex e) And now true is faster than TRUE! Woohoo! My PHP scripts will be blazing fast!!! :) Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2003-05-21 10:05:56] sniper@php.net Code readability always outweights minor performance gains, IMO. :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2003-05-21 08:57:42] max at fuck dot org I don't think I would ever use true/false a million times. This came up when talking to someone about which way was 'proper', whereas before it didn't seem to make a difference and now to allow people who want to write 'True' to get their way, it has been changed. While I don't think this is a big performance problem or anything, I think in conjuction with other little slow-downs on a high load site it could have an effect on the speed. It's obviously faster than older versions regardless of how you use it, but I don't think I have ever seen it used in lowercase anywhere on the php website. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2003-05-21 03:11:08] derick@php.net Why do you use 1000000 times TRUE or FALSE in your programs anyway? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2003-05-21 02:01:07] philip@php.net Use of proper case is faster than "improper" case for case insensitive constants. This includes true/false, null, and define()'s third parameter. Not sure what others... or even if this really should be documented? :) AFAICT, this behavior does not affect magical case insensitive constants such as __file__. This difference is as of 4.2.3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2003-05-20 20:08:24] sniper@php.net In real life applications you really won't notice any difference. And the lowercase version of any constant defined as case-insensitive will always be looked up faster. (ie. true is looked for first, then if not found, TRUE) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The remainder of the comments for this report are too long. To view the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online at http://bugs.php.net/23721 -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=23721&edit=1