Test: (int) vs. settype

If you already have a variable, logic tells us that changing is type might be faster than creating a new value (which a cast does.) But, is this true?

View test history (7) Run this test again Return to test menu

Result: Saved

The test labeled "settype()" was the faster by 0.0002 seconds, (0.034% faster)

settype() 100%

(int) 99.966%

The settype() test took 0.512 seconds.
The (int) test took 0.5122 seconds.

Nitty-Gritty

Each test case ran 20 random code order iterations consisting of 141,389 loops for a total of 2,827,780 runs.

Line execution difference (0.000000) milliseconds.
Avg difference (0.009) milliseconds per 141,389 loops.
Total difference 0.17 milliseconds for 2,827,780 loops

The iteration variablity for Code 1 was (0.8419) milliseconds and Code 2 was (0.7241) milliseconds. The lower and the closer together there values are the more accurate the results are.

Code

The first test, "(int)", was:

for ($j = 0; $j < 100; $j++)
{
	$i = '42 ';
	$i = (int) $i;
}

The second test, "settype()", was:

for ($j = 0; $j < 100; $j++)
{
	$i = '42 ';
	settype($i, 'int');
}

PHP Benchmarks