A Comparative Study on the Energy Consumption of PHP Single and Double Quotes

This paper is an enhanced version of the paper presented at the SEEDS Conference (Olaoluwa, et. al, 2015). The increasing rate of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emission resulting from the use of IT and other human activities to the atmosphere has become a major source of concern. It is imperative for the IT sector to ensure that its products are effective and energy efficient accompanied by mitigated negative impact on the environment. Reducing energy consumption of IT products is a key to contributing towards a greener environment. Another alternative is to produce energy efficient codes for software applications. In programming or scripting languages, an end result can be achieved in more than one way. For example, in PHP, a print command can be executed using a single quote and can also be achieved using a double quote. They have similar functions with similar quality of the intended outcomes. The aim of this research is conduct an investigation on the energy consumption of selected PHP scripts that perform similar functions: print single and double quote, echo single and double quote, etc The Joulemeter energy measuring tool is used to measure the amount of energy consumed when run the various PHP scripts.