System commands vs. native PHP-functions (xoda-0.4.1)

It's been always a pleasure for me using the CLI. And I deeply respect the power it is hidden behind the "prompt". Having that in mind, I didn't bother a lot using native PHP-functions while writing XODA. I was never worried about portability (it should work on the BSD's and that's all I carry about) and thought always that this would be not only the most easier and simple way to code but would get also the fastest results. Well... I was wrong.

I looked for any benchmarks between system and native PHP-functions and could not find anything a lot. Couple of days ago I finally decided to write my benchmark script and do the test using the following code:

function xd_rmrf ($o) {
if (is_dir ($o)) {
$objects = scandir ($o);
foreach ($objects as $object) {
if ($object != "." && $object != "..") {
if (is_dir ($o . '/' . $object)) { xd_rmrf ($o . '/' . $object); }
else { unlink ($o . '/' . $object); }
}
}
reset ($objects);
rmdir ($o);
} else { unlink ($o); }
}

define ('TEST_DIR', 'test/');
$ncycle = 100;
mkdir (TEST_DIR);
$start_native = microtime (true);
for ($i = 0; $i < $ncycle; $i++) {
$tmp_dir = TEST_DIR . $i;
mkdir ($tmp_dir);
$tmp_file = $tmp_dir . '/' . $i . '.file';
touch ($tmp_file);
$ntmp_file = $tmp_dir . '/' . 'file-' . $i;
rename ($tmp_file, $ntmp_file);
}

xd_rmrf (TEST_DIR);
$end_native = microtime (true);
$total_native = $end_native-$start_native;
mkdir (TEST_DIR);
$start_system = microtime (true);
for ($i = 0; $i < $ncycle; $i++) {
$tmp_dir = TEST_DIR . $i;
`mkdir $tmp_dir`;
$tmp_file = $tmp_dir . '/' . $i . '.file';
`touch $tmp_file`;
$ntmp_file = $tmp_dir . '/' . 'file-' . $i;
`mv $tmp_file $ntmp_file`;
}
`rm -rf TEST_DIR`;
$end_system = microtime (true);
$total_system = $end_system-$start_system;

The results were so much better in favor of the native PHP-functions that I was thinking this must have been obvious for everyone, just not for me. So, I rewrote most of the system functions using native PHP ones. Some system functions are still there since I don't know what to use e.g. for `file`.

Today I published XODA-0.4.1 reflecting these changes. Give it a try and let me know if you get any problems!