note 88931 added to control-structures.alternative-syntax

To mido_alone2001 at yahoo dot com, Alternative syntax takes up more characters, so if you're looking to squeeze out that < millisecond of processor time, using <?php if ($cond): sleep(1); endif; ?> ...is worse than... <?php if ($cond) { sleep(1) } ?> Also, your method of embedding PHP inside of HTML instead of vice versa can be good, but it's expensive. Consider these examples: <?php $variable = 'purple'; $iters = 10000000; // Test 1 for ($x = 0; $x <= $iters; $x++) { echo "<tr><td>$variable</td></tr>\n"; } // Test 2 for ($x = 0; $x <= $iters; $x++) { echo '<tr><td>'.$variable.'</td></tr>'."\n"; } // Test 3 for ($x = 0; $x <= $iters; $x++) { ?><tr><td><?php echo $variable;?></td></tr><?php } ?> If you run these tests with some timing and reporting code in between, you'll see that test 3 performs *much* slower (approx. 30% slower over 10m iterations) due to the frequent hopping in and out of PHP tags. Tests 1 and 2 are much closer in comparison. Here are some results I got (redirecting to dev null and using STDERR to report): me@jupiter scoping$ php scoping.php > /dev/null Time passed for Test 1 over 10,000,000 iterations: 11.26 Time passed for Test 2 over 10,000,000 iterations: 11.20 Time passed for Test 3 over 10,000,000 iterations: 15.29 me@jupiter scoping$ php scoping.php > /dev/null Time passed for Test 1 over 10,000,000 iterations: 10.88 Time passed for Test 2 over 10,000,000 iterations: 10.81 Time passed for Test 3 over 10,000,000 iterations: 14.88 Be wary of breaking out of PHP to render HTML within loops. ---- Server IP: 64.71.164.2 Probable Submitter: 168.122.64.150 ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/control-structures.alternative-syntax.php Edit -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/88931 Del: integrated -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88931/integrated Del: useless -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88931/useless Del: bad code -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88931/bad+code Del: spam -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88931/spam Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88931/non-english Del: in docs -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88931/in+docs Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88931 Reject -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/88931 Search -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php