Re: Pointers For Newbies, Reminders For Oldies

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 11:44 PM, Ashley Sheridan <ash@ashleysheridan.co.uk>wrote: > On Wed, 2010-01-27 at 10:42 -0500, Paul M Foster wrote: > > > "... should be obvious - but are often overlooked - points within coding > > practice that can cause the programmer to develop bad habits and bad > > code." - Dan Brown > > > > Tip #1: > > > > Don't use count() in loops unless there are very few items to count and > > performance doesn't matter, or the number will vary over the loop. That > > is, don't do this: > > > > for ($i = 0; $i < count($items); $i++) > > > > Instead, do this: > > > > $number = count($items); > > for ($i = 0; $i < $number; $i++) > > > > Reason: when you use the count() call at the top of the loop, it will > > re-evaluate the number of items each time it's called, which usually > > isn't necessary and adds time. Instead, work out the number of items > > before going into the loop and simply refer to that for the number of > > items in controlling the loop. > > > > Paul > > > > -- > > Paul M. Foster > > > > > What about using the right type of quotation marks for output: > > I use double quotes(") if I expect to output variables within the > string, and single quotes when it's just a simple string. > > It's only a general rule of thumb and shouldn't be adhered to > absolutely, but I remember a thread a while back that showed the speed > differences between the two because of the extra parsing PHP does on > double quoted strings. > > That should be on the stackoverflow.com It compare the string parsing with or without variables embeded and the important of comma operator when echo data use echo 'something', 'other' but not echo 'something' . 'other' Eric, > Thanks, > Ash > http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk > > >