Would this cause a performance dip?

[scottpeshak]

I have a script that echos some data, then calls some functions that inturn echo data, then after the functions are done it echos a final block of data. What i want to know is if having the functions store all of the data that they are echoing now in a variable, returning the variable, then outputting all of the data at once would cause a performace cost. thanks,
Scott Peshak

[eblade]

well, if the browser is capable of rendering it as it is echo'd rather than having to render it all at once, it may appear somewhat snappier to the user that way. On the other hand, depending on the lag times between echos, it may just look bad. shrug

I think there may be a maximum string length problem somewhere, also. Some of my pages just cut off for no obvious reason when I was using a custom template deal that would load very large webpages into a single string and echo it.

[Anon]

re: echoing / performance

To increase performance, you can enable output buffering.

It is preferable to use echo instead of concatenating strings, which increase server load (hence decreasing performance).

However, it is good practice to encapsulate functions/methods in modules. Tips in favour of modularity and maintainability, over performance.