PHP – Take advantage of language constructs

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  Fastest things in PHP are the language constructs.

  
  


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  They are highly optimized in the interpreter

  
  


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  Don’t require calling external libraries

  
  


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  Don’t call a function if there is a language construct. As an example, using a casting operator like (int) $total is much more efficient than using the function intval($foo)

  
  


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  Function calling generate considerably amount of overhead. Using a language construct avoid

  
  


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  isset() and unset() are both language constructs, even though they mostly act like functions. However calling them does not generate the function overhead.

  
  

Some common language constructs are:

1. 
   

   echo()

   
   


2. 
   

   empty()

   
   


3. 
   

   isset()

   
   


4. 
   

   unset()

   
   


5. 
   

   eval()

   
   


6. 
   

   exit()

   
   


7. 
   

   die()

   
   


8. 
   

   include()

   
   


9. 
   

   include_once()

   
   


10. 
    

    require()

    
    


11. 
    

    require_once()

    
    


12. 
    

    return