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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Historical Results

Based on (4) saved test runs, The test labeled "classes" was (on average) the faster by 0.0318 seconds, (3.697% faster)

classes 100%

arrays 96.303%

The classes test took 0.8287 seconds.
The arrays test took 0.8605 seconds.

Nitty-Gritty

Each test case ran 20 random code order iterations consisting of 184,414 loops for a total of 3,688,285 runs.

Line execution difference (0.000009) milliseconds.
Avg difference (0.000) milliseconds per 184,414 loops.
Total difference 31.81 milliseconds for 3,688,285 loops

The iteration variablity for Code 1 was (0.0000) milliseconds and Code 2 was (0.0000) 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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