PHP Performance Optimization: Faster Alternatives to Common Functions
This article presents a series of PHP function replacements—such as using isset() instead of array_key_exists(), strpos() over strstr(), pre‑increment ++$i, foreach over for, json_encode()/json_decode() instead of serialize()/unserialize(), strict === over ==, and implode() rather than string concatenation—to boost code speed without altering business logic.