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Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2025 14:42:23 +1200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] [Discussion] Add clamp function
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From: weedpacket@varteg.nz (Morgan)

On 2025-08-29 08:36, Tim Düsterhus wrote:
> 
> 
> Since a big part of your argument in favor of the clamp() function is 
> “performance” (both in your reply here and in the introduction to the 
> RFC): Please add meaningful benchmarks to the RFC text that show how 
> much faster clamp() is actually going to be compared to alternative 
> solutions.
> 
Another part of the argument is "complexity", as brought up in the 
original proposal. I notice that the offered implementation of this 
function relies entirely on zend_compare().

max/min special-case long and double arguments and compare them more 
directly, leaving cases like string/string, string/double, array/array, 
or boolean/null to be handled by zend_compare(). It is a lot more 
complex, turning less than a dozen lines (looping over and passing args 
to zend_compare()) into more than fifty, presumably for performance 
reasons. The extra complication may not be worth it if there are only 
two or three values being compared (long and double are the first types 
zend_compare tries).