PHP array: count or sizeof?

user_385273 0
Viewed 176166

To find the number of elements in a PHP $array, which is faster/better/stronger?

count($array) or sizeof($array) ?

Edit

Thanks to Andy Lester, I have refined my question to mean from a multilingual perspective. The manual commenters say

"[sizeof] does not mean the same in many other languages based on C"

Is this true?

php
8 Answers

I know this is old but just wanted to mention that I tried this with PHP 7.2:

<?php
//Creating array with 1 000 000 elements
$a = array();
for ($i = 0; $i < 1000000; ++$i)
{
    $a[] = 100;
}

//Measure
$time = time();
for ($i = 0; $i < 1000000000; ++$i)
{
    $b = count($a);
}
print("1 000 000 000 iteration of count() took ".(time()-$time)." sec\n");

$time = time();
for ($i = 0; $i < 1000000000; ++$i)
{
    $b = sizeof($a);
}
print("1 000 000 000 iteration of sizeof() took ".(time()-$time)." sec\n");
?>

and the result was:

1 000 000 000 iteration of count() took 414 sec
1 000 000 000 iteration of sizeof() took 1369 sec

So just use count().

user_25954500

Both are used to count elements in a array. sizeof() function is an alias of count() function used in PHP. However, count() function is faster and better than sizeof().

user_27724290
Related