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: Discarded

The test labeled "classes" was the faster by 0.0887 seconds, (11.528% faster)

classes 100%

arrays 88.472%

The classes test took 0.6808 seconds.
The arrays test took 0.7695 seconds.

Nitty-Gritty

Each test case ran 20 random code order iterations consisting of 137,981 loops for a total of 2,759,620 runs.

Line execution difference (0.000032) milliseconds.
Avg difference (4.435) milliseconds per 137,981 loops.
Total difference 88.71 milliseconds for 2,759,620 loops

The iteration variablity for Code 1 was (7.6635) milliseconds and Code 2 was (4.5922) 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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