How can PHP developers improve the performance of their scripts by separating data processing and output generation for large data sets?

When dealing with large data sets in PHP scripts, developers can improve performance by separating data processing from output generation. This means processing the data first and storing it in variables or arrays, and then generating the output using these pre-processed data structures. By doing so, the script can avoid repeatedly processing the same data for each output iteration, leading to faster execution times.

// Process data
$data = fetchDataFromDatabase();

// Generate output
foreach ($data as $row) {
    echo $row['column1'] . ' - ' . $row['column2'] . '<br>';
}