Test: many classes vs. associative arrays

Does it make any difference when you have multiple classes being instantiated vs. multiple arrays? Note that both are wrapped in an eval to make it fair (another option would be to pre-create all of the classes, but this is more illustrative.)

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Result: Saved

The test labeled "arrays" was the faster by 0.0074 seconds, (1.534% faster)

arrays 100%

classes 98.466%

The arrays test took 0.4764 seconds.
The classes test took 0.4838 seconds.

Nitty-Gritty

Each test case ran 20 random code order iterations consisting of 129,955 loops for a total of 2,599,100 runs.

Line execution difference (0.000003) milliseconds.
Avg difference (0.371) milliseconds per 129,955 loops.
Total difference 7.42 milliseconds for 2,599,100 loops

The iteration variablity for Code 1 was (0.6601) milliseconds and Code 2 was (0.7184) milliseconds. The lower and the closer together there values are the more accurate the results are.

Code

The first test, "classes", was:

$name = 'TestClass' . $GLOBALS['i']++;
eval('
class ' . $name . '
{
	var $x, $y, $z;
}

$data = new ' . $name . '();

$data->x = \'test\';
$data->y = 1;
$data->z = 5.5;');

The second test, "arrays", was:

$name = 'TestArray' . $GLOBALS['i']++;
eval('
$' . $name . ' = array(
	\'x\' => null,
	\'y\' => null,
	\'z\' => null,
);

$' . $name . '[\'x\'] = \'test\';
$' . $name . '[\'y\'] = 1;
$' . $name . '[\'z\'] = 5.5;');

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