Re: Fastest way to find out if a string contains a certain character?

On 27 July 2010 11:46, Ashley Sheridan <ash@ashleysheridan.co.uk> wrote: > > On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 11:35 +0200, Peter Lind wrote: > > On 27 July 2010 11:27, Ashley Sheridan <ash@ashleysheridan.co.uk> wrote: > > On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 09:30 +0200, Gary wrote: > > > >> I know there are a number of possible ways of doing this, but I was just > >> wondering if there is an accepted way of doing so which is better > >> than others, performance wise. An idiom, if you like. > >> > >> > > > > > > If you only need to find if a string contains the character and not its > > position, then strstr() (or strchr(), but according to the manual they > > are both the same) is the fastest route to go down. Using strpos() is > > slower because it has to return the actual position of what you were > > looking for, and a regex will be the slowest of all (and one would have > > to question the sanity of someone using a regex to find a single > > character in a string!) > > > > I doubt there will be a noticeable difference between strstr and > strpos - returning a bool is not faster than returning an integer. > Would have to check the actual php source to see how the two are > implemented to see if there's any real difference that might make a > difference in speed. > > Regards > Peter > > > I tell a lie! Just checked the manual and strpos() is indeed the faster than strstr(). I > vaguely remembered it was one of the two, but had not had quite enough coffee at this point of the > morning obviously! > While on the topic of lack of coffee: I should know better than to reply without checking the docs. strstr() returns a string, not a bool - which would make it slower, though again, not noticeably so (unless, like Ashley points out, you're doing a HUGE number of strstr() calls). Regards Peter -- <hype> WWW: http://plphp.dk / http://plind.dk LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/plind BeWelcome/Couchsurfing: Fake51 Twitter: http://twitter.com/kafe15 </hype>