https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.register-tick-function.php
You can compare two ways of coding a script for the same end result by counting the number of ticks it takes to execute each version.
For this you can use register_tick_function() that allows you to execute a certain function at each tick.
For this to work you will need to use the declare function with the tick directive.
https://www.php.net/manual/en/control-structures.declare.php
declare(ticks=1); $c=0; // A function called on each tick event function tick_handler() { global $c; $c+=1; } register_tick_function('tick_handler'); echo $c.'\n';
Keep in mind that some code might be more efficient than others for the same task due to their underlying C implementation. Or is it stricly equivalent (less tick== always faster)?