>but I am wondering if it is at the cost of a slower page loading. The reason >I think this is whenever I would like to display a variable I have to put in >a script tag like <?PHP print $S_Current; ?>. I might have as many as 20 of >these on a page. Every time doesn't PHP have to start again and parse out >this information causing it to be really slow?
PHP is already started, and going, and reading your HTML. It only has to notice when you have <?php and start paying a little more attention instead of just spewing out the HTML it encounters. The context change from HTML mode to PHP mode is a negligible, practically un-measurable performance hit. I switch back/forth way more than 20 times in most scripts. Rule of Thumb: 90% of your script's time is being spent in 10% of the code. If it's "too slow" figure out where that 90% is, and optimize that. Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that in the web... That 90% might all be in MySQL, or in the network congestion, or in your messed-up reverse DNS lookup, or... But, still, if you've narrowed the speed problem down to PHP itself, then start figuring out where it's spending all its time *before* you change a line of code. If it's not "too slow" don't even worry about performance, unless you are actually working on a site that is likely to balloon into millions of users or whatever. Even then -- only testing *YOUR* site, and *YOUR* set up will find the 90% reliably. -- Like Music? http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
