
		  -=- Documentation for PHPBench 0.8.1 -=-
			http://phpbench.pureftpd.org


  PHPBench is a benchmark suite for PHP.
  
  It performs a large number of simple tests in order to bench various
aspects of the PHP interpreter.

  PHPBench can be used to compare hardware, operating systems, PHP versions,
PHP accelerators and caches, compiler options, etc.

  Custom tests can be easily added to the suite.


	       ----------------[ Basic usage ]----------------

  The 'tests' directory contains all tests that PHPBench will try to perform.
  This directory can be copied in:
  
 - /usr/local/lib/phpbench/tests
 - /usr/local/share/phpbench/tests
 - /usr/lib/phpbench/tests
 - /usr/share/phpbench/tests
 - /opt/phpbench/tests
  
  Alternatively, if you run this application in its own directory, you don't
need to copy the 'test' directory.

  In order to start a basic benchmark, just type:
  
  ./phpbench.php
  
  or if something goes wrong:
  
  php phpbench.php
  
  or if you want to save the output to a file:
  
  ./phpbench.php | tee output.txt
  

	    ----------------[ Iterations number ]----------------

  In order to get accurate results, every test is evaluated more than once.
  
  By defaut, tests are evaluated 100000 times, or multiples of that value for
some tests that are known to be CPU-expensive or other tests that are known to
be very fast.

  If you have slow hardware or very fast hardware, you can change the number
of iterations, with the -i switch:

  ./phpbench.php -i 5000
  
  The 'score' you get when the benchmark completes is a ratio between the
number of iterations and the total time that was needed to perform all
tests. Thus, the score should be independant of the number of iterations,
but the higher number you use, the more accuracy you will get.


	       ----------------[ CSV output ]----------------

  You can save a CSV summary of the benchmark. This summary contains the
time needed to perform every test, and a percentile value. A value of 12%
would mean that 12% of the total time was needed for that particular test.

  The summary can be loaded in almost any spreadsheet, including, but not
limited to: Kspread (Koffice), OOcalc (Openoffice), Gnumeric and Excel.

  In order to produce that CSV file, just use the -f option, followed by the
name of the file you are willing to create:

  ./phpbench.php -f summary.csv



                                     Frank Denis <j@pureftpd.org>
