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 0.0269 seconds, (2.458% faster)

classes 100%

arrays 97.542%

The classes test took 1.069 seconds.
The arrays test took 1.0959 seconds.

Nitty-Gritty

Each test case ran 20 random code order iterations consisting of 294,027 loops for a total of 5,880,540 runs.

Line execution difference (0.000005) milliseconds.
Avg difference (1.347) milliseconds per 294,027 loops.
Total difference 26.94 milliseconds for 5,880,540 loops

The iteration variablity for Code 1 was (2.9610) milliseconds and Code 2 was (3.7436) 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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