Why does a backslash prefix improve PHP function call performance

Have you ever noticed developers putting backslashes (\) in front of their PHP function calls? Many developers (including myself) do this, however few developers actually know why. It’s often referred to as a micro-optimization, but how could such a simple thing as a backslash improve the performance of your application? PHP namespaces Introduced in PHP version 5.3, namespaces serve as...