Direct method call slower than method_exists()

Case #1: https://pastebin.com/cT0gWuNH
Case #2: https://pastebin.com/724v9rBZ
Case #3: https://pastebin.com/9zXpztCc
Case #4: https://pastebin.com/q87p9S4r

2018-03-08 14:52 GMT-03:00 Nikita Popov nikita.ppv@gmail.com:

On Thu, Mar 8, 2018 at 6:41 PM, David Rodrigues david.proweb@gmail.com
wrote:

I have take note that a lot of projects (like Laravel) prefer uses
method_exists() than implements an empty function (that should be useful
to
IDE when it is not annotated as an @method on class).

For some reason, method_exists() will works faster than direct call when
method doesn't exists vs. a direct method call when method is empty.

My benchmarks:

Case #1:

• Direct call, empty method:
• Cycles by min. : 26.459.804

Case #2:

• Direct call, simple content (eg. is_bool(true)):
• Cycles by min. : 24.771.454

• 6.38% slower than Case #1

Case #3:

• method_exists(), no method:
• Cycles by min. : 45.014.690

• 70.12% faster than Case #1

Case #4:

• method_exists(), method exists with simple content:
• Cycles by min. : 18.068.555

• 27.06% slower than Case #2

You will note that method_exists() will be more useful when method doesn't
exists (+70% faster), but worse in cases where it does (27% slower). Which
make that a hard decision, because you need "guess" the method declaration
usage when implements something like that. If case the method existence is
very low, then you will prefer method_exists(), which is bad for code
design.

My suggestion here (that I don't know if could be applied as is): identify
empty methods and avoiding the execution (once that it will not do
anything
anyway). So we could just implement empty methods without any problem.

Maybe it could be done at this point and related:
https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/master/Zend/zend_languag
e_parser.y#L725

--
David Rodrigues

Could you please provide the used benchmarking code?

Nikita

--
David Rodrigues