Create multi-int, multi-string query placeholders for D6

results of speed comparisons attached. The bottom line - using implode(',', array_fill(0, count($args), '%d')) is not very good compared to having a placeholder that can handle multi-int lists. Interestingly, we could use str_tok() to give added flexibility (if desired) with similar or better performance than just using explode().

since '%dd' won't work (the 1st 2 chars are matched first), how about '%D' ?

This technique could, potentially, be extended to strings, but it's harder to get right since we need to be sure each string end up wrapped in single quotes.

here's a patch that does the same thing for Strings - Moshe says this would be useful for Views, OG, etc.

Note usage is like:

db_query("SELECT * FROM {node} WHERE type IN('%S')", implode(',', $args)));

note the wrapping single quotes are required as with %s - I think this makes sense for consistency.

(note: it would be better in terms of security to make %s and this add the outer quotes automatically, but that would require changing a lot of core code - should it be proposed?).

Heres a test script - again there results are similar to above. For a single argument, it's better to use '%s', but for ~3 or more, the str_tok() or explode() is faster.

For example, in a typical run with PHP 4.4.7 I got:

t1: 20.985004663467, t2: 14.322191238403, t3: 14.432777166367 where num args is 11

@Dries - yes, I expect so. But does that mean this patch is going to cause problems then? Or that it would just be a short-lived changed to the API, or that we'd be better off just implementing a placeholder helper function?