php - Will reducing number of includes/requires increase performance?

Question

What is better practice for script performance tuning?

This one?

require_once("db.php");

if (!is_cached()) {
  require_once("somefile.php");
  require_once("somefile2.php");
  //do something
} else {
  //display something
}

Or this one?

require_once("db.php");
require_once("somefile.php");
require_once("somefile2.php");

if (!is_cached()) {
  //do something
} else {
  //display something
}

Is it worth placing includes/requires into flow control structures or no?

Thank you

Answer 1

Includes and requires are designed in part to allow you to organize your code and make maintaining your software easier to do. While there technically is a performance hit for using includes it is negligible and more then offset by increasing the maintainability of your software. Especially if you use an opcode cache. I wouldn't worry about this and chalk it up to premature optimization.