I thought of a way to validate string length earlier today, and when I went to go benchmark it, it proved to be faster/more efficient than using strlen.

My method:
After ten-thousand iterations, it proved to only be 0.001500s, where as:

Took about 0.006000s

So as I see it, using my method proves to be very efficient (3x's faster than strlen). Any objections, comments, or complaints before I state this as a standard in my mind?

There is another method wich is about 20 times faster on my computer:

Fascinating finds Although there's the distinct possibility that Jay's PC is just slower than yours, sjag. Be good to test them side-by-side on the same PC.

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Nice fine indeed. However, the question is, are you going to sacrifice the "readability" of your conditionals for the sake of a few milliseconds? Personally, I wouldn't

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I'm with Karl on this one. The strlen function typs really easy, can be remembered by even the beginners and ofcourse, be used for a LOT of other diffirent things. I use $string[$i] for displaying the last character in a sentence. For example, $i = strlen($string); echo $string[$i];.

Very nice find, but I wouldn't use it either. Maybe there might be some who find it more useful than me but personally, I do not see the gain.

Non the less, good job! And try what Wildhoney said!

Mark

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The results on my benchmark output relatively the same speed..

Also, why use { } and not [ ]? It's the same thing, [ ] looks neater

The reason I want to use it.. because it's less typing , and I can read it about, if not, the same.

I also prefer using {} as opposed to [].

It's a matter of preference. Just make sure you stay consistent in your code and all will be fine.

Aren't they removing the curly braces in PHP 5.3/6?

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If they are, I won't miss em :)

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I tested them on the same computer with this code:
(speed.php contains a simple speed testing class)

isset() is a language construct and not a function just like echo, require, include, etc. Therefore it's much faster than a 'real' function like strlen().

I use {} to access a character in a string and [] to access an element in an array. It's easier for others to understand the code when you differentiate between these two 'constructs'.

I haven't heard about that and I don't hope so.

I always found it a bit odd accessing characters in a string as you would items in an array. I've always been tempted to use str_split to make it make sense.

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Wildhoney, I don't see any advantages in using str_split() instead of accessing directly the characters. Actually, there are no differences when using {} or [] except of it's much faster because it's a language construct and str_split() is a function. sort(), array_combine(), and all other functions explicitly expect an array as an argument and wouldn't work in most of the cases with strings properly. So why do prefer to have a 'real' array even though it's slower and does only make sense if you need to perform actions on that array. Perhaps there are not any big differences (Of course that depends on the length of the string!) but imagine you're using it str_split() in a loop with one million iterations. I guess the 'little' difference might be significant.

Yeah. I don't, but I am always tempted to because accessing characters in a string as you would items in an array seems absurd to me.

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But then, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Think about it: what is an array: an enumeration of various data types. What is a string: an enumeration of characters. So, since they are both enumerations, it makes sense to be able to access strings as arrays. Also, they are not going to remove the curly brace syntax. If my memory is good, they said using curly braces when accessing string elements instead of square brackets is faster for the simple fact that:
- square brackets are made for array data types, and:
- curly braces were later optimized for string data types (in php 4.x I believe)

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I see, I see. I knew I'd heard that somewhere. Thanks Salathe. I suppose it does make sense, it's just to me I don't think of a string as an enumeration, but rather an inseparable sequence. Perhaps I should begin altering my thinking regarding that.

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