PHP Benchmarking

July 14, 2010

There's only a few things that people want out of a PHP application, too bad for you that those few things encompass just about everything.

Efficiency
Functionality
Security
Aestetics

Not in any particular order. The good news is, I've spent a little time benchmarking PHP code to let you see first hand what the results are. Please note, I've ran these on a laptop, not a big time production server, so they make seem to have taken a bit. The number isn't the goal here, the comparison between them is. Some will be interesting, some will be the exact same as the other ones. At least you'll know (and have some ammunition) when somebody tells you "THAT'S NOT RITE!"

If you're interested in downloading the code I used to benchmark these elements, there's a -zip- file for that!

They won't be exact, as I repurposed some of them (i.e. different methods to concat strings, evaluate, etc).

String Concatenation

Iterations: 500,000
Concats per iteration: 20

Probably one of the more interesting benchmarks:

$temp = $mystring . " " . $mystring . " " (...)
Scored: 2.035299 Seconds

$temp = "{$mystring} {$mystring} (...)
Scored: 1.237544 Seconds

$temp = "$mystring $mystring (...)
Scored: 1.236022 Seconds

Other Concatenations

Iterations: 500,000
Concats per iteration: 1

Don't compare these with the previous, they're not necessarly related to them due to differing levels of concatenation.

$a = $a . $mystring;
Scored: 0.584638 Seconds

$a .= $mystring;
Scored: 0.575480 Seconds

String Encapsulation

Iterations: 50 Million

$a = '1234567890poiuytrewqasdfghjkl/.,mnbvcxz';
Scored: 7.486550 Seconds

$a = "1234567890poiuytrewqasdfghjkl/.,mnbvcxz";
Scored: 7.477590 Seconds

Conjunctive (Logical) Evaluations

Iterations: 50 Million

Performing logical evaluations on equivalent floats, that are not in variables.

Using: &&
Scored: 5.898687 Seconds

Using: AND
Scored: 5.799526 Seconds

Using: ||
Scored: 4.663750 Seocnds

Using: OR
Scored: 4.600031 Seconds

Using: ===
Scored: 4.065238

Using: ==
Scored: 4.217280

Using: !=
Scored: 3.874042

Using: !==
Scored: 3.863586

Using: <
Scored: 3.950963

Using: >
Scored: 4.029640

Using: <=
Scored: 4.288681

Using: >=
Scored: 4.290717

MOAR!

There's more to come. That's all for today, kiddies. If you have any suggestions, please contact me. No comments yet! Be the first!