Okay, this is a silly question...

Dixen

...but I honestly cannot find an answer.

In the PHP Manual, basic syntax section, (LINK) it says the following, just after the last example:

This works as expected, because when PHP hits the ?> closing tags, it simply starts outputting whatever it finds until it hits another opening tag. The example given here is contrived, of course, but for outputting large blocks of text, dropping out of PHP parsing mode is generally more efficient than sending all of the text through echo() or print() or somesuch.

So, the silly question of the day... How much is "large" when saying that large blocks of text are more efficient not being parsed through php? Is it just more efficient to only parse what must be parsed or does it only matter once we start talking about a couple hundreds lines, more or less?

Thanks.

Yamakazi

Lol, that is a silly question.

Just make that out on your own.

Choose for yourself what works best. And what makes your code best readable and fast editable.

If you have blocks of over 100 lines of HTML and NO php at all i think for one you are doing something wrong.

Dixen

Nah... most of the code that I am referring to have 10-15 lines of straight html code that I am echoing. However, there are a couple of scripts that I end up echoing a single line of code a couple hundred times. Each line contains a couple or 3 variables surrounded by table code, formatting, etc (html). So, I'm wondering if it would be more efficient to do it without echoing the whole line and just echo the variables through the parser.

rehfeld

Originally posted by Dixen
Nah... most of the code that I am referring to have 10-15 lines of straight html code that I am echoing. However, there are a couple of scripts that I end up echoing a single line of code a couple hundred times. Each line contains a couple or 3 variables surrounded by table code, formatting, etc (html). So, I'm wondering if it would be more efficient to do it without echoing the whole line and just echo the variables through the parser.

you can always test it yourself.
go here for an example of how to meaure the speed of parts of your script

http://www.php.net/microtime

you will probably find the difference in speed is very insignificant unless you are outputting a very large amount of text. but jumping in and out of php also takes time. really all you can do is time it yourself so you get a feel for when jumping in and out of php is beneficial.

also keep in mind, if you have output buffering on, everything will change. some php installations even use a default buffer of about 4k. if this is so, then that will also affect your tests, and the size of this default buffer will as well.

to summarize, dont spend much time on this. i would recomend like above, do whatever is most readable and maintainable. the differences in speed will prob be very very small fractions of a second.