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 (6) saved test runs, The test labeled "classes" was (on average) the faster by 0.0123 seconds, (1.656% faster)

classes 100%

arrays 98.344%

The classes test took 0.7326 seconds.
The arrays test took 0.7449 seconds.

Nitty-Gritty

Each test case ran 20 random code order iterations consisting of 182,523 loops for a total of 3,650,467 runs.

Line execution difference (0.000003) milliseconds.
Avg difference (0.000) milliseconds per 182,523 loops.
Total difference 12.33 milliseconds for 3,650,467 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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