[PHP] Object overhead vs. arrays

[Christoph Boget]

I knew that there would be some overhead when working with objects vs
working with arrays, but I didn't expect this much.  Is there some
optimization that I could do to improve the performance any?  While
the script below is just a benchmark test script, it approximates
functionality that I'm going to need to implement.  Ultimately, I need
to iterate through a large amount of data and am wondering if perhaps
I should encapsulate the data in objects (which closer represents the
underlying data) or if I should encapsulate it in arrays.  Based on
what I'm seeing in this benchmark script, it seems like it should be
the latter...

Advice and/or input would be much appreciated!

thnx,
Christoph

<?php

  class TestObj
  {
    private $sVar1;
    private $sVar2;
    private $sVar3;
    private $aVar4;

    public function __construct()
    {
    }

    public function setVar1( $sValue )
    {
      $this->sVar1 = $sValue;
    }

    public function setVar2( $sValue )
    {
      $this->sVar2 = $sValue;
    }

    public function setVar3( $sValue )
    {
      $this->sVar3 = $sValue;
    }

    public function setVar4( $aValue )
    {
      $this->aVar4 = $aValue;
    }
  }

  $iMaxIterations     = rand( 1, 123456 );
  $iMaxElements       = rand( 1, 10 );
  $aMasterArraysArray = array();
  $aMasterObjsArray   = array();

  $aWorkingTmp = array();
  for( $i = 0; $i <= $iMaxElements; $i++ )
  {
    $aWorkingTmp[] = 'Testing';
  }

  $iStartTime = microtime( TRUE );
  for( $i = 0; $i < $iMaxIterations; $i++ )
  {
    $aTmp = array();
    $aTmp['var1'] = rand();
    $aTmp['var2'] = rand();
    $aTmp['var3'] = rand();
    $aTmp['var4'] = $aWorkingTmp;

    $aMasterArraysArray[] = $aTmp;
  }
  $iEndTime = microtime( TRUE );

  $iArrayTotalTime = ( $iEndTime - $iStartTime );

  echo $iArrayTotalTime . ' seconds elapsed for [' . $iMaxIterations .
'] iterations for ARRAY.<br>';

  $iStartTime = microtime( TRUE );
  for( $i = 0; $i < $iMaxIterations; $i++ )
  {
    $oTmp = new TestObj();
    $oTmp->setVar1( rand());
    $oTmp->setVar2( rand());
    $oTmp->setVar3( rand());
    $oTmp->setVar4( $aWorkingTmp );

    $aMasterObjsArray[] = $oTmp;
  }
  $iEndTime = microtime( TRUE );

  $iObjectTotalTime = ( $iEndTime - $iStartTime );

  echo $iObjectTotalTime . ' seconds elapsed for [' . $iMaxIterations
. '] iterations for OBJECTS.<br><br>';

  if( $iArrayTotalTime > $iObjectTotalTime )
  {
    echo 'Arrays took [' . ( $iArrayTotalTime - $iObjectTotalTime ) .
'] seconds longer,
          a factor of [' . ( $iArrayTotalTime / $iObjectTotalTime ) . ']<br>';
  }
  else
  {
    echo 'Objects took [' . ( $iObjectTotalTime - $iArrayTotalTime ) .
'] seconds longer,
          a factor of [' . ( $iObjectTotalTime / $iArrayTotalTime ) . ']<br>';
  }

?>

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