Rubbish. Twice. First, <= can be a single assembler comparison instruction (<= is the same as not >). Even if it wasn't, this is a ridiculous attempt at micro-optimization.

And second: do you really want to calculate the expression 1+$messages every single time?

My guts tell me it's impossible for $foo<(1+$messages) to be faster than $foo<=$messages. On the contrary. And then, execution time will be very low for both, compared to the time spent in the rest of the script. This is pretty much a waste of time.