Hi Internals, I'd like to confirm/refute some knowledge I think I have of the PHP internal workings with respect to variables and references. I believe that when a variable is assigned the value of another variable an internal reference is created and some bit is used to keep track of whether the value should be copied when an attempt is made to change either the original variable or the newly assigned variable (maybe this isn't the case for integers or floats since the performance would be similar). Can anyone confirm or elaborate further?
Also I think I remember hearing once upon a time that creating a reference in PHP script is more work than creating a copy when the copy won't be altered? Can this be confirmed also? Last but not least, do objects work under the same principles? I did some benchmarking and my first question seems to hold since assigning by value a 100000 entry array 10 million times runs as fast as assigning a single integer 10 million times. The second doesn't seem to hold true since the execution time is slightly (but significantly and consistently) faster. Thanks for any information. Rob. -- .------------------------------------------------------------. | InterJinn Application Framework - http://www.interjinn.com | :------------------------------------------------------------: | An application and templating framework for PHP. Boasting | | a powerful, scalable system for accessing system services | | such as forms, properties, sessions, and caches. InterJinn | | also provides an extremely flexible architecture for | | creating re-usable components quickly and easily. | `------------------------------------------------------------' -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
