Test: recurison vs. not (trivial)

What is the cost of a recursive algorithm vs. a non-recursive one?

View test history (1) Run this test again Return to test menu

Result: Discarded

The test labeled "non-recursive" was the faster by 0.0805 seconds, (8.190% faster)

non-recursive 100%

recursive 91.81%

The non-recursive test took 0.9022 seconds.
The recursive test took 0.9827 seconds.

Nitty-Gritty

Each test case ran 20 random code order iterations consisting of 139,103 loops for a total of 2,782,060 runs.

Line execution difference (0.000029) milliseconds.
Avg difference (4.024) milliseconds per 139,103 loops.
Total difference 80.48 milliseconds for 2,782,060 loops

The iteration variablity for Code 1 was (17.0749) milliseconds and Code 2 was (20.6172) milliseconds. The lower and the closer together there values are the more accurate the results are.

Code

The first test, "non-recursive", was:

/*
function recurse_not($i)
{
	$result = 0;

	while ($i > 0)
	{
		$result += $i;
		$i -= 5;
	}

	return $result;
}
*/

$result = recurse_not(5000);

The second test, "recursive", was:

/*
function recurse_normal($i)
{
	if ($i > 0)
		return $i + recurse_normal($i - 5);
	else
		return 0;
}
*/

$result = recurse_normal(5000);

PHP Benchmarks