What is the difference between is_a and instanceof?

Question

I am aware that instanceof is an operator and that is_a is a method.

Is the method slower in performance? What would you prefer to use?

Answer 1

Here are performance results obtained from here:

instanceof is faster.

Functions

function method_1($a = null) { 
    return is_object($a) && is_a($a, 'Example');
}

function method_2($a = null) {
    return is_a((object) $a, 'Example');
}

function method_3($a = null) {
    return $a instanceof 'Example';
}

Times (run 5000 times each)

0.00573397 // method_1(5) 
0.01437402 // method_2(5) 
0.00376201 // method_3(5)