Drew Kime

> Perhaps one of you can decipher these numbers... It seems to me that
> the user+sys time only adds up to over 0.06 seconds. Which I believe
> would be the time that something like this SHOULD actually take.
> However, the actual elapsed time is odd because: a) its so slow, b) the
> print statements are so much faster than raw characters.

I suspect the speed is due to the server not having to parse through all
those characters. If you have any type of parsing happening on your raw
HTML files -- for SSI, etc. -- the server has to parse through every single
character looking for control codes. With the single print statement in a
loop, it is able to simply execute the command.

I have no figures to back up this supposition, but it has a "common sense"
logic to it. See how long it takes (you, not a computer) to find the string
"<?" in a file of 100,000 random characters, then see how long it takes to
find the same string in the file:
<? while ($i < 100000):
echo("*");
$i++;
endwhile ?>
It parses much faster, then just spits out the characters. Has anyone done
a test of raw HTML output speed with all parsing, including SSI, disabled?