Benchmark: dirname(__FILE__) vs __DIR__ in PHP

dirname(__FILE__) and __DIR__ give exactly the same result in PHP, although one (__DIR__) is evaluated at compile-time, while the other (dirname(__FILE__)) has at least part of it (the function) evaluated at execution time. Ever wondered what the difference is, in terms of efficiency, between the two? I've written a *very* simple script to try it out:

<?php
$loops = 100000000;
echo 'Testing dirname(__FILE__)' . PHP_EOL;
$start = time();
$dir = '';
for ($i = 0; $i < $loops; $i++) {
 $dir = dirname(__FILE__);
}
echo 'dirname(__FILE__) took ' . (time()-$start) . 's' . PHP_EOL;
$start = time();
$dir = '';
for ($i = 0; $i < $loops; $i++) {
 $dir = __DIR__;
}
echo '__DIR__ took ' . (time()-$start) . 's' . PHP_EOL;

So what it does is it executes both statements 100,000,000 times on my laptop, without any PHP caching enabled. The results?

Testing dirname(__FILE__)
dirname(__FILE__) took 17s
__DIR__ took 4s

So __DIR__ is about 4 times faster, albeit only when you consider 100,000,000 executions (which is unlikely in most configurations). However, it is common for a complex PHP application to require about 10,000 executions of functions to render one single page, so if you have about 1000 users, you'll start saving a relevant amount of processing time.