Test: (bool) vs. !empty

According to the documentation, empty is like isset and a reverse bool cast. Perhaps together, those are faster than the cost of the ! on empty?

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Result: Saved

The test labeled "!empty()" was the faster by 0.0221 seconds, (3.641% faster)

!empty() 100%

(bool) 96.359%

The !empty() test took 0.5841 seconds.
The (bool) test took 0.6061 seconds.

Nitty-Gritty

Each test case ran 20 random code order iterations consisting of 140,914 loops for a total of 2,818,280 runs.

Line execution difference (0.000008) milliseconds.
Avg difference (1.104) milliseconds per 140,914 loops.
Total difference 22.07 milliseconds for 2,818,280 loops

The iteration variablity for Code 1 was (4.0458) milliseconds and Code 2 was (4.1802) milliseconds. The lower and the closer together there values are the more accurate the results are.

Code

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

for ($j = 0; $j < 1000; $j++)
{
	$i = '1';
	$GLOBALS['dummy'] = isset($i) && (bool) $i;
}

The second test, "!empty()", was:

for ($j = 0; $j < 1000; $j++)
{
	$i = '1';
	$GLOBALS['dummy'] = !empty($i);
}

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