Re: Array mysteries

On Mar 11, 2007, at 1:59 PM, tedd wrote:

At 12:02 PM -0500 3/11/07, Edward Vermillion wrote:

On Mar 11, 2007, at 10:02 AM, tedd wrote:

At 3:05 PM +0100 3/11/07, Tijnema ! wrote:

On 3/11/07, tedd <<mailto:tedd@sperling.com>tedd@sperling.com> wrote: At 10:05 AM +0100 3/11/07, Tijnema ! wrote:

- You could define $wdays inside the function function convert_from_weekday ($weekday) { $wdays = array (0 => "Sonntag" ,1 => "Montag" ,2 => "Dienstag" ,3 => "Mittwoch" ,4 => "Donnerstag" ,5 => "Freitag" ,6 => "Samstag" ); return $wdays[$weekday]; } $day = convert_from_weekday(0) // $day = "Sonntag"

Tijnema: That's also a shorter version of a simple switch statement. I haven't thought of, or seen, that before -- thanks. tedd Yeah it is, but i just used moved his $wdays inside the function... but well, there are ofcourse a lot of other options, as date("l") would also return the day of the month :) Tijnema

It's the technique and not the specific data thing I was addressing. When I'm confronted with a case condition, I typically use the switch statement. But, your solution provided me with another way to look at that. Cheers, tedd

But what's the cost of this in a loop, rebuilding the array each time, as compared to a switch statement? Just another thought...

Ed It's just another way to look at a possible solution. As for the cost, what are we talking about? I doubt that a "typical" application would show any discernable difference in execution times. One could test this easy enough by running both through 50k loops, but even then I doubt that the times would be that much different -- but I may be wrong, been there before. Cheers, tedd

I don't know if there would be any difference either, which is why it was a question. Although Larry's suggestion of making the array static is something I hadn't thought of. Overall it is an interesting concept to use an array instead of a switch, and I do wonder at what point, if any, that the two would start to diverge resource-wise. Would the array lookup be faster for a lesser-used option/key in a situation where there were quite a few options? (you wouldn't have to go through the whole switch to get to the option at the end (?) or would you? I have no idea how that all works internally) Ed