Efficiency of PHP Programming Concern

[jaylee]

In terms of execution, is it more efficient to write multiple functions to a separate file and then use "require myfunctions.php4" to use them, or just write everything into the main program?

I know it's easier for people to read with each function performing its sole task in a separate file. But consider about efficiency, if the main file is going to be executed a lot of times, would it be more efficient to integrate all the codings into the main program file?

[[deleted]]

A script will execute at the same speed, no matter how many files the source is made up from.

But before it can execute, the code must be loaded and parsed.

Obviously, the more code there is, the longer the parsing will take.

So you'll want to chop your script up into smaller pieces and include/require them as needed.
That cuts down on the amount of code, and make the parsing faster.

BUT! include/require does filesystem functions.
They load scripts from disk and parse them before they can be executed.
This takes time!

In some cases, just loading the files may take longer than parsing them, which means that if you use many includes/requires, your many small scripts may actually take longer to parse than one big script.