I have a question on speed but also dealing with the method of scripting. I have a few pages where I get things like weather and stocks. I get the data, which is usually in the form of a Comma delimited string like the stock quotes from Yahoo.com. In the past, I also wrote a function to get the data and split into variables like $S_Current, $S_ChangePercent, $S_ChangeDollar ect.... Then I would print out a whole HTML table with the variables embedded within. This function was called from a PHP type web page. Lately, I have been making the variables global and using them when I need them. For instance, I have a page called index.php. At the stock section of the page, I have a function that is called and returns the major indices, like NASDAQ, DOW and S&P. I global the variables and then within the index.php page I called the variables as I need them in tables. This makes designing the page simple. I can do it in Frontpage or Dreamweaver or whatever. The old way was to call the function and the function would print out the HTML table as part of the function. I hope I am explaining this well enough to understand. Doing it the newer way for me with the global variables makes it easier to design the web page, but I am wondering if it is at the cost of a slower page loading. The reason I think this is whenever I would like to display a variable I have to put in a script tag like <?PHP print $S_Current; ?>. I might have as many as 20 of these on a page. Every time doesn't PHP have to start again and parse out this information causing it to be really slow? The old way was for me to call the function like <?PHP indices(); ?> and then the function would print out; <table> <tr> <td>Dow</td> <td>NASDAQ</td> <td>S & P</td> </tr> <tr> <td>$Dow_Current<img src=\"img\up.gif\"></td> <td>$Nas_Current<img src=\"img\up.gif\"></td> <td>$Snp_Current<img src=\"img\dn.gif\"></td> </tr> </table> Which is faster? Which is better? Is there another way?
Christopher J. Crane Network Operations Manager IKON Office Solutions 860.659.6464
