preg_replace_callback vs while loop line by line for template compiler

 

Hello ,

 

i built php class for parsing html templates , and i used preg_replace_callback function for parsing template while loops & if conditions , for loop , ... etc

 

i repeated the function many times , for every process , such as one time for parsing while loop , and another time for if conditions parsing .. etc , and repeated all of these steps again when parsing include files inside the template ,

 

but i think that this method of parsing is slow when parsing big template , 

 

so i think that using one while loop and read template line by line and compare it then parsing found line will be more fast , 

 

so what is your opinion , using one while loop and read the template file line by line and parsing it is more useful ? or using preg_replace_callback ?

 

and is it preferred to parse the codes inside the template ? by replacing it with php code then evaluate the template using eval() ? or parsing it inside the php file then append the result to the template ?