On checking form fields that they are of type int, what is best to use:
intval() or type casting (int)?
In terms of speed, would (int) not be better, because we save a function
call (especially on very large sql statements)?
Time it.
On an 800mhz box doing absolutely nothing else (it's just sitting there, honest :) a script which reads 100,000 16byte strings from a testfile (composed of a bunch of tar balls put together just to get something random) and then doing this:
- loop through array doing $x = $array[$i] just to read it all in once.
- loop through array doing $x = intval($array[$i])
- loop through array doing $x = (int) $array[$i]
yields this (in seconds).
nothing = 0.3619658946991
intval = 0.60399794578552
(int) = 0.48065304756165
So, for 100,000 random 16 byte strings you're saving 0.12 seconds or 0.0000012 per iteration...
So, it probably doesn't really matter :)
-philip