Script is really slow with functions

[bhugger]

Here's how the script looked to begin with, execution time not noticeable:

<?php

$html = "";

$html .= "some text 1";
$html .= "some text 2";
...
$html .= "some text n";

echo $html;

?>

later I wanted to clean it up, so I wrote it as follows, execution time now up to several seconds!!

<?php

function addToHtml(&$dest, $text)
{
$dest .= $text;
}

$html = "";

addToHtml($html, "some text 1");
addToHtml($html, "some text 2");
...
addToHtml($html, "some text n");

echo $html;

?>

why would this code-change make the script take soooooo much more time to execute?

I'm using Apache 2 with PHP4.3.

Thanks for your help,

Ben

[diego25]

How many function calls do you have?

Well, functions do take a bit more time because it has to add to the stack, create new variables, etc. But a few functions won't make much a difference...

And by "sooo much more time", exactly how much more do you mean?

Diego

[bhugger]

It was 5 functions, that were called some 40 times.

Though I found the problem though... :o
Some functions I had called

doSomething(&$variable);

instead of

doSomething($variable);

The added time for this mistake was 2 seconds every time the script was called.

Ben

[128kb_com]

So you are saying that by using a refernce as a function parameter that increased your functions runtime?? Strange, you'd think it would be a little faster if not the same, of course less memory intensive on the stack but the functions stack should get thrown away after each new call...right??

( especially when your runtime complexity is O(1) )

[hand]

I just made a testscript which calls 11.000 (elfthousand) times your function.
The responsetime based on time() command is about 0 (zero) seconds.

I tested it an a WAMP so I had to take time() instead of microtime().

What do you think about now?