How many improvement can you spot in this one liner ? echo (“this “.$will.” be displayed.”); No need for parenthesis with echo The first, and probably the most obvious, are the useless parenthesis. The echo is a ‘structure of language’, aka a special kind of function for PHP : among others, it doesn’t need any […]
Caching with PHP static variables Whenever a methodcall is used repeatedly in a piece of code, you may wonder if it wouldn’t be more efficient to cache the value locally, avoid the functioncall altogether and speed up the process. Let us see how we can cache with PHP static variables. Functioncalls are rather intensive : PHP […]
Clear PHP reaches 100 rules Last week, we published the 100th rule in clear PHP. They represent recommendations to write clear PHP code. Such recommendations has various effect : avoid common pitfalls (No Unchecked Resources) prepare code for recent versions (Use Smart Autoload) complete some check that the engine doesn’t do ( No Switch With […]
array_unique function is a native function that will extract distinct values in an array. array_count_values is also a native function that will extract distinct values in an array, and count the number of occurrences. array_count_values actually does a lot more work than array_unique by providing a count of the distinct values, on top of finding […]
30
Sep
Sep
I’ll be giving a talk ‘automated PHP code audits‘ to the 010php user group, in Rotterdam. “Even nowadays, PHP code is mostly manually audited. Expert pore over actual code, in search for bugs or code smells. Actually, it is possible to have PHP do this work itself ! Strengthened with the internal Tokenizer, bolstered by […]
31
Aug
Aug
Switch statements in PHP link a situation (the cases) to code to be executed. Just like this : switch ($a) { case ‘a’ : /* code here */ case ‘b’ : /* code here */ default : /* code here */ } Duplicate code in switch statements With the size of the switch, it is easy to miss that cases […]
27
May
May
Reviewing code is like checking your own copy before handing in an exam : last exam I took was driving test (incredible, I know), and I passed by 0 the 100 questions quiz. I do remember changing three or four answers while reviewing the answers, and even as I don’t know for sure about it, I […]