PHP echo performance

Question

I'm always using an output variable in PHP where I gather all the content before I echo it. Then I read somewhere (I don't remember where, though) that you get best performance if you split the output variable into packets and then echo each packet instead of the whole output variable.

How is it really?

Answer 1

If you are outputting really big strings with echo, it is better to use multiple echo statements.

This is because of the way Nagle's algorithm causes data to be buffered over TCP/IP.

Found an note on Php-bugs about it:
http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=18029

Answer 2

This will automatically break up big strings into smaller chunks and echo them out:

function echobig($string, $bufferSize = 8192) {
  $splitString = str_split($string, $bufferSize);

  foreach($splitString as $chunk) {
    echo $chunk;
  }
}

Source: http://wonko.com/post/seeing_poor_performance_using_phps_echo_statement_heres_why