Question

We’ve coded two validation functions, one is like below (it gets all the fields at once):

function check_fields(&$arr,&$msg,$types,$lens,$captions,$requireds) {}

and the other function is something like below:

function is_valid($field=NULL,$type=0 ,$length=0,$required=true) {}

First function has a few code lines, and reduces code lines dramatically (about 30-35 lines or even more), on the other side the second function without reference increases the code lines (about 30-35 lines or even more).

We have to call the second function for every field we want to validate, but the first function (check_fields) is vice versa.
I’ve read in an article long time ago that functions with reference parameters are bad from a performance point of view.

Now we don’t know which function to use. Which one is better from a performance perspective?

Answer 1

Well I think I got my answer myself after some web searches:

Do not use PHP references