My understanding is that "name".class.php is standard convention for creating classes in PHP, and consequently I have a separate file for each class. What I would like to do is consolidate my small php class hierarchy into one single file... say consolidated.class.php.
This will make it easier to upload/download to the server + if I need to run a simple textual search I don't have to look in more then one file. Additionally, I can remove include / require, since I'm essentially manually inserting them.
The question is, can I consolidate with out taking a performance hit?
EDIT/UPDATE
Much time later, I am using separate files and an autoloader. This should be more efficient, but of course, how much, is dependent upon the size of the files.
The reason people use the one class per file convention is for class autoloaders. This allows your script to automatically only load code that is actually being used by your script in that particular instance. If you load ALL of you classes every time a page loads, it's a fairly inneficient way to go.
For more information about class autoloaders: