Thread: PHP IF Statement Evaluation & Server Overhead

Does anyone know how much server overhead there is when PHP if statements are evaluated, i.e. memory consumption and CPU usage and if this is a major issue? I've searched around and didn't find anything that definitively answered this question.

For example, if I have a WordPress blog and use a lot of if statements to render each post summary on the home page, is this going to require a great deal more server resources if the home page starts getting high traffic? And, on pages where many posts are listed (i.e. category pages) , it seems like this could become an issue.

Or, is this something I shouldn't even be worrying about?

What exactly are you trying to do?

If you just want to know how long it takes for an expression in an if statement to run well it depends on what your doing, for instance

if ($i == $j) will run very quickly but

if (md5($i * 12 / 400 * time()) == 'hj4lsj7ghn3128klj84kmnqdf90lee32 will take longer to evaluate.


Generally if statements wont give your server any problems as its simple maths

For the most part, I am evaluating whether a value exists for a certain field in a database or whether a certain value exists for the current post.

well I tend to do an if strlen($var) > 0 as i've had issues with isset and empty in the past but really I wouldn't worry about the time it takes for an if statement to evaluate you'd be better stream lining queries