Removed unnecessary $tokenCount var

[phanan]

I know @taylorotwell said he tends to "shy away" from these "cleanup PRs," but can't help it.

[arrilot]

Using count() inside for is an anti-pattern because it executes on every iteration and leads to performance degradation on large arrays

[phanan]

@arrilot No.

[laurencei]

So out of curiosity - I was wondering how much effect using count() on the loop had based upon @arrilot comments

For a 100,000 array:

• Using $tokenCount ran the 100,000 loop in 0.005 secs
• Using count($array) ran the 100,000 loop in 0.05 secs

So it is an order of magnitude faster to precalculate the array size. However that is only for an extremely large array. Arrays less than 1,000 had no noticeable runtime difference.

Note - I dont support or deny the PR one way or the other - was just curious and thought I'd post my results here "for science"

[andrewhood125]

👎

[GrahamCampbell]

@phanan, unfortunately, you are not correct.

[phanan]

@GrahamCampbell No worries, I've been wrong numerous times in my life 😄 But which statement of mine is incorrect this time?

@theshiftexchange and @arrilot According to the for loop documentation:

The first expression (expr1) is evaluated (executed) once unconditionally at the beginning of the loop.

Which means the call to count($array) is evaluated only once. Try for yourself:

<?php

function called() {
    echo 'Called';
    return 10;
}

for ($i = 0, $j = called(); $i < $j; ++$i) {
    echo $i;
}

// output: Called0123456789

[GrahamCampbell]

Ohhh, @phanan you are actually correct. I apologise. I misread the diff as having the function call after the semicolon, rather than before it, in the bit where we initialise the iteration.

[GrahamCampbell]

@theshiftexchange No, this isn't executed every time. If it were, then $i would get initialised on every iteration, which of course isn't what happens.

[laurencei]

Yep - in my test I didnt do the var initizilation the way @phanan did it.

His way is correct and produces same run times for the array

[GrahamCampbell]

Even then, this change is totally pointless. We could put every single variable in that bit of the for statement if we wanted to, but why would we? The current way is actually more readable.

[GrahamCampbell]

And the performance is identical.

[GrahamCampbell]

You say "removed", but actually, you've basically just renamed it, and moved it a little bit lower in the code...

[phanan]

@GrahamCampbell Agreed. I tend to be too nitpicking time to time...