Why adding $this->models. make it faster? - php

Question

I was playing around with this code. http://programmersvoice.com/tag/code
And I noticed that the following line.
$this->load->model($this->models."pagemodel", 'pages');
I compare this with
$this->load->model("pagemodel", 'pages');
This is what codeigniter's document http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/models.html#loading suggest.
However method 2 takes longer time than the first one.
Could anyone explain what "$this->models." do please?
Thanks in advance.
The following is the whole code of pages.php in controllers/admin
<?php
class Pages extends Application
{
function Pages()
{
parent::Application();
$this->auth->restrict('editor'); // restrict this controller to editor and above
$this->load->model($this->models."pagemodel", 'pages'); // Load the page model
}
function manage()
{
$data = $this->pages->pages(); // List the pages
$this->table->set_heading('Title', 'Slug', 'Actions'); // Setting headings for the table
foreach($data as $value => $key)
{
$actions = anchor("admin/pages/edit/".$key['id']."/", "Edit") . anchor("admin/pages/delete/".$key['id']."/", "Delete"); // Build actions links
$this->table->add_row($key['title'], $key['slug'], $actions); // Adding row to table
}
$this->auth->view('pages/manage'); // Load the view
}
function delete($id)
{
$this->pages->delete($id);
$this->auth->view('pages/delete_success');
}
function add()
{
$this->load->helper(array('form', 'url'));
$this->load->library('form_validation');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('title', 'Page Title', 'required');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('content', 'Content', 'required');
if($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE)
{
$this->auth->view('pages/add');
}
else
{
$data['title'] = set_value('title');
$data['content'] = set_value('content');
$data['slug'] = url_title($data['title'], 'underscore', TRUE);
$this->pages->add($data);
$this->auth->view('pages/add_success');
}
}
function edit($id)
{
$this->load->helper(array('form', 'url'));
$this->load->library('form_validation');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('title', 'Page Title', 'required');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('content', 'Content', 'required');
if($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE)
{
$data = $this->pages->page($id);
$this->auth->view('pages/edit', $data[0]);
}
else
{
$data['title'] = set_value('title');
$data['content'] = set_value('content');
$data['slug'] = url_title($data['title'], 'underscore', TRUE);
$this->pages->edit($id, $data);
$this->auth->view('pages/edit_success');
}
}
}
?>

Answer 1

I'm not totally sure about the following, since the current version of Codeigniter doesn't seem to populate the $this->models variable, but I think that:
$this->models contained the full path to the application models directory, and therefore loading is faster, since CI doesn't have to look in different folders (global & application)