RE: Making osCommerce more patch-friendly.

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http://forums.oscommerce.com/viewtopic.php?p=152727#152727
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[quote="Wayne Luke"]It is almost impossible to write PHP code to a 60 column right margin and have it be efficient and fast.[/quote]

Sorry, but I don't buy that lame excuse.

You can insert newlines almost anywhere in a PHP statement with no measurable effect on its efficiency.

For a concrete example, please take a look at this line of code from default.php and try to tell me, with a straight face, that it could not have been broken into two or more lines:

[code]
$category_query = tep_db_query("select cd.categories_name, c.categories_image from " . TABLE_CATEGORIES . " c, " . TABLE_CATEGORIES_DESCRIPTION . " cd where c.categories_id = '" . $current_category_id . "' and cd.categories_id = '" . $current_category_id . "' and cd.language_id = '" . $languages_id . "'");
[/code]

I believe the following equivalent code would run with no measurable effect on performance:

[code]
$category_query = tep_db_query(
  "select cd.categories_name, c.categories_image from " .
  TABLE_CATEGORIES . " c, " .
  TABLE_CATEGORIES_DESCRIPTION . 
  " cd where c.categories_id = '" . 
  $current_category_id . 
  "' and cd.categories_id = '" . 
  $current_category_id . 
  "' and cd.language_id = '" . 
  $languages_id . "'");
[/code]

Sure, the character count for the expression increases from 308 characters to 333 characters, but now it's far easier to patch.

If the PHP engine spends 50% of its time parsing statements and the other 50% of its time executing them, the above change would result in less than a 5% decrease in performance.

Why is that so unacceptable?