I realized for being a software engineer that I haven’t written much about programming or coding or anything else. I work mostly with PHP and MySQL, but as some of our applications are getting mad traffic now, I’ve been doing every little thing possible to optimize them.
Here’s a few code optimization tips (mostly PHP) that may not seem obvious to everyone:
- $i++ vs ++$i Remeber back in college? There was always some sort of ++i / i++ trick question on exams right? So what’s the main difference? Most of you have been hard coded to use $i++ everytime, however that’s not always the best idea. The post increment (i++) actualy creates a temporary variable in memory to retain the value of i before incrementing. The pre increment (++i) doesn’t do that. It simply increments i. If you want to use the incremented version of i inside your loop only, then you might as well use the pre; it’ll save you a bit of memory.
- using sizeof() or .size() or whatever. How many times have you done this?
for(i=0; i < sizeof(array); i++) {While this is technically correct, it isn’t the best solution when the cardinality of array is large. Coding it this way will actually re-calculate the size of the array every time the loop runs; and the functional overhead can get expensive. If possible, you should calculate the size once then compare against that.
- Speaking of functional overhead…Don’t use functions where built in operators will do. For example, this code:
if (strlen($foo) < 5) {can be done without all the overhead by using some of php's natural operations like this:
if(!isset($foo[4])) {The difference here is that isset() is built in to the language (it works like + or -) whereas strlen isn't. (it works like a function you define)
Anyway.. that's enough for now. I'm taking a vacation this weekend.. but when I get back, I'll post some other cool things you might not have known.