Coding practice

Anon

I Have been coding PHP for over a year now, and I been used to echo all the HTML output.

eg.

if ($var == 3) {
echo "HTML content\n";
}
else {
echo "HTML content\n";}
}

My question is:
Is this practice more demaninding for the server? or is it better to sprinkle the PHP code out over the document.

regards,
Thomas Andersen

wylim

I personally believe that it doesn't matter both parse just as quickly. As long as your file is like 10Mb. You shouldn't ever really see a difference in speed. If you have a huge load of visitors and large files your best bet is to sprinkle php through out the file it reduced the PHP parseing that has to be done before the file is even sent to the viewer for the brower to read the HTML.

cheald

Logically, there is probably a performance hit for using echo, since it acutally has to parse that code, rather than just ignoring it and dumping it to stdout. However, unless you have an absolutely massive file, it's not gonna be noticible.

Personally, I sprinkle the php code in as necessary due to ease of code and editing the code. I have a tendancy to just do this:

for($i=0;$i<10;$i++) {
?>
The number was "<?=$i?>" 
<?
}

Rather than this:

for($i=0;$i<10;$i++) {
echo "The number was \"$i\" \n";
}

because it's just easier to edit the HTML. If you have a large form, or complex piece of code, it's just masochistic to try to echo it.