I was told once a long time ago in a classroom far, far away that testing for true was a bit more efficient than testing for not true (!$some_var).
Just curious if this is true, or if anyone even has this in the back of their mind when creating their code structure.
It has, for some reason, stuck with me. I will often test for true rather than not-true if at all possible.
I have a feeling I will be face-palming myself soon haha
In PHP I'm not really sure if it makes a difference in real terms. Ultimately it's a 1 or a 0 if you get what I mean so I doubt it has a noticeable impact if any at all.
I think it's because some stuff might have a default value of false, so if you test for true you're really sure it's true because it has to be..if it makes sense...
JoniGuiro, if you are referring to testing as such I know what you mean: $somevar === FALSE
(PS... awesome avatar haha)
I think it was explained to me that it's a bit of a double-test... 'is it not-true?'. Compared to just 'is it true?'. So if possible, test for true, rather than not-true.
I highly doubt it makes any difference (noticeably) at all. I was just curious if anyone else had this strange logic in their head ;)
You'll see this a lot in JS where people are checking something:
Another reason you'll want to use ! is because it checks for more than just false. You may be looking through an array looking for a value and it could return:
null
undefined
empty string
None of those things === false, so you wouldn't be able to catch them. If you used !$somevar then you are golden!
And I've just realized you were asking for the difference simply between checking true/false. So you'll just have to take my post above as extra information haha.
I was told once a long time ago in a classroom far, far away that testing for true was a bit more efficient than testing for not true (!$some_var).
Just curious if this is true, or if anyone even has this in the back of their mind when creating their code structure.
It has, for some reason, stuck with me. I will often test for true rather than not-true if at all possible. I have a feeling I will be face-palming myself soon haha
In PHP I'm not really sure if it makes a difference in real terms. Ultimately it's a 1 or a 0 if you get what I mean so I doubt it has a noticeable impact if any at all.
I think it's because some stuff might have a default value of false, so if you test for true you're really sure it's true because it has to be..if it makes sense...
JoniGuiro, if you are referring to testing as such I know what you mean: $somevar === FALSE
(PS... awesome avatar haha)
I think it was explained to me that it's a bit of a double-test... 'is it not-true?'. Compared to just 'is it true?'. So if possible, test for true, rather than not-true.
I highly doubt it makes any difference (noticeably) at all. I was just curious if anyone else had this strange logic in their head ;)
I say we run a test case... Let's loop through 10,000 if statements testing true rather then false. If im bored enough, i just might do it..
@fooman, that's right, it's a double test.
Let's say
$somevar = false. If you do:...what you're really writing is
So you can just do
You'll see this a lot in JS where people are checking something:
Another reason you'll want to use
!is because it checks for more than justfalse. You may be looking through an array looking for a value and it could return:None of those things === false, so you wouldn't be able to catch them. If you used
!$somevarthen you are golden!And I've just realized you were asking for the difference simply between checking true/false. So you'll just have to take my post above as extra information haha.