Testing file include times for a file that may or may not exist

Question: Should you check for a file before attempting to include it, or just suppress errors? Calling file_exists requires stating it twice if the file does exist, so that could take longer. Answer: the file_exists pattern is more than five times faster than the @include pattern for a file that doesn’t exist, and not substantially slower when the file does exist.

The test:

&lt;?php

$start_time = $end_time = $i = 0;

$start_time = microtime( TRUE );
for( $i = 0; $i &lt;= 100000; $i++)
{
	include __DIR__ . '/config.php';
}
$end_time = microtime( TRUE );
echo 'Test 1: '. ( $end_time - $start_time ) ." seconds \n\n";
//Test 1: 13.27784204483 seconds 


$start_time = microtime( TRUE );
for( $i = 0; $i &lt;= 100000; $i++)
{
	@include __DIR__ . '/config.php';
}
$end_time = microtime( TRUE );
echo 'Test 2: '. ( $end_time - $start_time ) ." seconds \n\n";
//Test 2: 13.47793507576 seconds 


$start_time = microtime( TRUE );
for( $i = 0; $i &lt;= 100000; $i++)
{
	@include __DIR__ . '/nonexistant-file.php';
}
$end_time = microtime( TRUE );
echo 'Test 3: '. ( $end_time - $start_time ) ." seconds \n\n";
// Test 3: 3.8437511920929 seconds 


$start_time = microtime( TRUE );
for( $i = 0; $i &lt;= 100000; $i++)
{
	if( file_exists( __DIR__ . '/config.php' ) )
	{
		include __DIR__ . '/config.php';	
	}
}
$end_time = microtime( TRUE );
echo 'Test 4: '. ( $end_time - $start_time ) ." seconds \n\n";
// Test 4: 14.759271144867 seconds 


$start_time = microtime( TRUE );
for( $i = 0; $i &lt;= 100000; $i++)
{
	if( file_exists( __DIR__ . '/nonexistant-file.php' ) )
	{
		include __DIR__ . '/nonexistant-file.php';	
	}
}
$end_time = microtime( TRUE );
echo 'Test 5: '. ( $end_time - $start_time ) ." seconds \n\n";
// Test 5: 0.74464702606201 seconds

Menu