php String Concatenation, Performance

In languages like Java and C#, strings are immutable and it can be computationally expensive to build a string one character at a time. In said languages, there are library classes to reduce this cost such as C# System.Text.StringBuilder and Java java.lang.StringBuilder.

Does php (4 or 5; I'm interested in both) share this limitation? If so, are there similar solutions to the problem available?

Solution 1:

No, there is no type of stringbuilder class in PHP, since strings are mutable.

That being said, there are different ways of building a string, depending on what you're doing.

echo, for example, will accept comma-separated tokens for output.

// This...
echo 'one', 'two';

// Is the same as this
echo 'one';
echo 'two';

What this means is that you can output a complex string without actually using concatenation, which would be slower

// This...
echo 'one', 'two';

// Is faster than this...
echo 'one' . 'two';

If you need to capture this output in a variable, you can do that with the output buffering functions.

Also, PHP's array performance is really good. If you want to do something like a comma-separated list of values, just use implode()

$values = array( 'one', 'two', 'three' );
$valueList = implode( ', ', $values );

Lastly, make sure you familiarize yourself with PHP's string type and it's different delimiters, and the implications of each.

Solution 2:

I was curious about this, so I ran a test. I used the following code:

<?php
ini_set('memory_limit', '1024M');
define ('CORE_PATH', '/Users/foo');
define ('DS', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);

$numtests = 1000000;

function test1($numtests)
{
    $CORE_PATH = '/Users/foo';
    $DS = DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
    $a = array();

    $startmem = memory_get_usage();
    $a_start = microtime(true);
    for ($i = 0; $i < $numtests; $i++) {
        $a[] = sprintf('%s%sDesktop%sjunk.php', $CORE_PATH, $DS, $DS);
    }
    $a_end = microtime(true);
    $a_mem = memory_get_usage();

    $timeused = $a_end - $a_start;
    $memused = $a_mem - $startmem;

    echo "TEST 1: sprintf()\n";
    echo "TIME: {$timeused}\nMEMORY: $memused\n\n\n";
}

function test2($numtests)
{
    $CORE_PATH = '/Users/shigh';
    $DS = DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
    $a = array();

    $startmem = memory_get_usage();
    $a_start = microtime(true);
    for ($i = 0; $i < $numtests; $i++) {
        $a[] = $CORE_PATH . $DS . 'Desktop' . $DS . 'junk.php';
    }
    $a_end = microtime(true);
    $a_mem = memory_get_usage();

    $timeused = $a_end - $a_start;
    $memused = $a_mem - $startmem;

    echo "TEST 2: Concatenation\n";
    echo "TIME: {$timeused}\nMEMORY: $memused\n\n\n";
}

function test3($numtests)
{
    $CORE_PATH = '/Users/shigh';
    $DS = DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
    $a = array();

    $startmem = memory_get_usage();
    $a_start = microtime(true);
    for ($i = 0; $i < $numtests; $i++) {
        ob_start();
        echo $CORE_PATH,$DS,'Desktop',$DS,'junk.php';
        $aa = ob_get_contents();
        ob_end_clean();
        $a[] = $aa;
    }
    $a_end = microtime(true);
    $a_mem = memory_get_usage();

    $timeused = $a_end - $a_start;
    $memused = $a_mem - $startmem;

    echo "TEST 3: Buffering Method\n";
    echo "TIME: {$timeused}\nMEMORY: $memused\n\n\n";
}

function test4($numtests)
{
    $CORE_PATH = '/Users/shigh';
    $DS = DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
    $a = array();

    $startmem = memory_get_usage();
    $a_start = microtime(true);
    for ($i = 0; $i < $numtests; $i++) {
        $a[] = "{$CORE_PATH}{$DS}Desktop{$DS}junk.php";
    }
    $a_end = microtime(true);
    $a_mem = memory_get_usage();

    $timeused = $a_end - $a_start;
    $memused = $a_mem - $startmem;

    echo "TEST 4: Braced in-line variables\n";
    echo "TIME: {$timeused}\nMEMORY: $memused\n\n\n";
}

function test5($numtests)
{
    $a = array();

    $startmem = memory_get_usage();
    $a_start = microtime(true);
    for ($i = 0; $i < $numtests; $i++) {
        $CORE_PATH = CORE_PATH;
        $DS = DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
        $a[] = "{$CORE_PATH}{$DS}Desktop{$DS}junk.php";
    }
    $a_end = microtime(true);
    $a_mem = memory_get_usage();

    $timeused = $a_end - $a_start;
    $memused = $a_mem - $startmem;

    echo "TEST 5: Braced inline variables with loop-level assignments\n";
    echo "TIME: {$timeused}\nMEMORY: $memused\n\n\n";
}

test1($numtests);
test2($numtests);
test3($numtests);
test4($numtests);
test5($numtests);

... And got the following results. Image attached. Clearly, sprintf is the least efficient way to do it, both in terms of time and memory consumption. EDIT: view image in another tab unless you have eagle vision.