Question: What kind of performance implications are there to consider when using try-catch statements in php 5? 

I've read some old and seemingly conflicting information on this subject on the web before. A lot of the framework I currently have to work with was created on php 4 and lacks many of the niceties of php 5. So, I don't have much experience myself in using try-catchs with php.

Answer: 
Try-catch blocks are not a performance problem - the real performance bottleneck comes from creating exception objects.

Test code:

```
function shuffle_assoc($array) { 
    $keys = array_keys($array);
    shuffle($keys);
    return array_merge(array_flip($keys), $array);
}

$c_e = new Exception('n');

function no_try($a, $b) { 
    $a = new stdclass;
    return $a;
}
function no_except($a, $b) { 
    try {
        $a = new Exception('k');
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        return $a + $b;
    }
    return $a;
}
function except($a, $b) { 
    try {
        throw new Exception('k');
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        return $a + $b;
    }
    return $a;
}
function constant_except($a, $b) {
    global $c_e;
    try {
        throw $c_e;
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        return $a + $b;
    }
    return $a;
}

$tests = array(
    'no try with no surrounding try'=>function() {
        no_try(5, 7);
    },
    'no try with surrounding try'=>function() {
        try {
            no_try(5, 7);
        } catch (Exception $e) {}
    },
    'no except with no surrounding try'=>function() {
        no_except(5, 7);
    },
    'no except with surrounding try'=>function() {
        try {
            no_except(5, 7);
        } catch (Exception $e) {}
    },
    'except with no surrounding try'=>function() {
        except(5, 7);
    },
    'except with surrounding try'=>function() {
        try {
            except(5, 7);
        } catch (Exception $e) {}
    },
    'constant except with no surrounding try'=>function() {
        constant_except(5, 7);
    },
    'constant except with surrounding try'=>function() {
        try {
            constant_except(5, 7);
        } catch (Exception $e) {}
    },
);
$tests = shuffle_assoc($tests);

foreach($tests as $k=>$f) {
    echo $k;
    $start = microtime(true);
    for ($i = 0; $i < 1000000; ++$i) {
        $f();
    }
    echo ' = '.number_format((microtime(true) - $start), 4)."<br>\n";
}

```

Results:

```
no try with no surrounding try = 0.5130
no try with surrounding try = 0.5665
no except with no surrounding try = 3.6469
no except with surrounding try = 3.6979
except with no surrounding try = 3.8729
except with surrounding try = 3.8978
constant except with no surrounding try = 0.5741
constant except with surrounding try = 0.6234

```
I have not found anything on Try/Catch performance on Google but a simple test with a loop throwing error instead of a IF statement produce 329ms vs 6ms in a loop of 5000.