" " Vs ' '

[jebster]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I don't really no how to search for ' or " 😕 And I think that this is the proper place for this topic, though I very well could be wrong..

Why do people always use " " instead of ' '? I thought single quotes where faster than double? And if they are why would one use double? 😕 Am I missing something here? I always use singles cause I thought it was faster but when I look at people's code here they are almost always using doubles(at least from what I have seen).

So if some one could enlighten me that would be wonderful! 🙂

[goldbug]

Double quotes evaluate what is inside.
For example:

$cowsay = 'moo';
echo "Cows say $cowsay.";

would evaluate to "Cows say moo.".

If one used single-quotes:

$cowsay = 'moo';
echo 'Cows say $cowsay.';

would evaluate to "Cows say $cowsay.".

It's really that simple. For that reason (replacement/evaluation, or lack thereof), single quotes are marginally faster.

Another difference (due to replacement):
The only thing that needs escaping in a single-quoted string, is a single quote (\'), but anything else is ignored (including \n).

[jebster]

Yea, thats what I thought, guess other people just don't need to make stuff as fast as possible, I do however cause my computer already takes forever to execute the simplest script 🙁

[sijis]

Here's a benchmark i just recently found on this question:

Basically there is no difference in speed using either one.

http://www.blueshoes.org/phpBench.php

[Moonglobe]

what i usually do is define constants for all the escape codes i use and just . them all together:

define('N',"\n");
define('T',"\t");

this way it only makes me drop into double quotes once per escape code.

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by goldbug
It's really that simple. For that reason (replacement/evaluation, or lack thereof), single quotes are marginally faster.

It's very marginal in my experience. In fact, the only time double-quoted strings are noticeably slower than single-quoted ones is when the double-quoted string does contain a variable to be interpolated. And even then the delay has to be integrated over a fair few thousand iterations.

I only know about these threads because I posted in them.

[Pig]

The difference is so small that it's not worth worrying about. It's far better to spend your time optimizing control structures and loops.

[Thatsmej]

i am aware that dubble quotes are fatser,

the only reason why i user dubble is because i learned this way,

when i type echo the next thing that automaticly follows is " instead of '

sow i guess it`s just depending on the way you teached yourself..