On Wed, 2006-07-26 at 22:29, Michael B Allen wrote:
> Is a function return value copied? If the value is an integer I suppose
> it is but what about a string or an array? If you pass by reference is
> the return value still copied?
>
> For example, is this:
>
> function foo(&$arr) {
> $arr[] = "bar";
> }
>
> faster than this?
>
> function foo(&$arr) {
> $arr[] = "bar";
> return $arr; // is this copied?
> }
>
> I'm working on some code that would be called to generate a cell in a
> possibly large table and therefore a small difference in performance
> may have a significant impact.
PHP uses copy-on-write and so copies are essentially shared until such
time as you modify one of them. If you don't need references then copies
are faster than references.
Cheers,
Rob.
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