Since I stumbled upon PHP5’s SPL (Standard PHP Library) I’ve been a fan and supporter of its features, mainly ArrayObject, ArrayIterator and DirectoryIterator. I knew they were not as efficient as the standard “old school” way, but I thought that the standardized interface would outweigh the small (or so I thought) performance hit they would take. Then one day at an interview I had they questioned my use of these and in turn, made myself really question the use of them. So I went home and did some micro benchmarking to prove to myself and anybody else that it was not that much slower.