--- Bob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Something I've always been meaning to ask.
> If going thro a large amount of data, does it matter whether I compare the
> value to the array item, or visa-versa?
>
> $colr = array('red', 'blue', 'green', etc);
> example 1
> foreach($colr as $item) {
> if ($item == 'blue')
> // Do something
> }
> example 2
> foreach($colr as $item) {
> if ('blue' == $item)
> // Do something
> }
>
> Obviously, example 1 is more readable. But I seem to remember reading that
> one is more beneficial, but dismissed it at the time.
> Thanks, Bob.
I have seen some suggest using the comparison you have in example 2 because you
will get a parse error if you try to use a single equal sign (assignment)
instead of a double equal (comparison). PHP will cheerfully take the first
example and if you have a single equal sign it will make the assignment and the
resulting expression will be true (unless the value is 0).
Looping through an array for a value might be better served with array_search()
or array_keys() depending on whether you want/expect only one value or multiple
occurrences of the value in the search array. For an array with a dozen or 100
items it probably doesn't make a noticeable difference but larger arrays could
benefit from using the optimized functions for this purpose.
James
