Performance

Implementation

clamp() uses direct comparisons:

if ($value > $max) {
    return $max;
} elseif ($value < $min) {
    return $min;
}
return $value;

clampMinMax() uses the common alternative:

return max($min, min($max, $value));

The direct-comparison approach avoids the overhead of two function calls, which makes a measurable difference at high call volumes.

Benchmarks

Measured over 100,000 executions:

Type	clamp()	clampMinMax()
String	0.00350 s	0.00617 s
Integer	0.00294 s	0.00560 s
Float	0.00286 s	0.00625 s

clamp() is roughly 2× faster across all types. In most applications this difference is negligible, but it matters in tight loops with a large number of calls.

Comparison with other packages

Most existing PHP clamp packages use the max/min idiom. This package uses direct comparisons to reduce function-call overhead. The syntax also matches C++'s std::clamp, which keeps the argument order consistent if you work across languages.