Posted by Curtis on 10/13/01 11:36

gerg <noemail@noemail.com> wrote in message
news:L_KdnViu1KTc8SbeRVn-pw@comcast.com...
>
> > <?php
> > global $user;
> > if ($user->uid) {?> <li><a href="logout" title="">Log
> > Out</a></li>
> > <?php } else {?> <li><a href="user/login" title="">Log
> > In</a></li>
> > <?php }?>
> >
>
> I've heard that it's actually faster (processor wise) to
do it this way,
> then to have the PHP engine parse the html, and then have
the browser
> render it. If you do it the above way, PHP doesn't have
to parse it
> there for it's faster. Is this not the case?
>
> Greg

Another poster observed that, Greg.

But on a CMS, where PHP is already doing so much, one
wonders if the putative speed increase would be worth the
convolution of mixing code--I'm very skeptical. I'd
sacrifice a 10% speed decrease for greatly increased code
maintainability any day. Too, one has to wonder the overhead
of all those <?php ?> start-stops, some embedding a single
curly brace.

As it turns out, last night I refactored a Drupal theme, one
that originally used that start-stop commingling of HTML and
PHP. The original was sheer torture to read; there were few
blocks of straight HTML, as almost every other line had PHP
conditional statements, then HTML, then PHP again. Can of
worms.

I chose to make *everything* a PHP statement. The finished
code was half as long and twice as easy to understand.


--

Curtis

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