How can this crude function be improved?

Question

In the first function below, inside the foreach, I'm calling out to the 2nd function in order to test for the occurence of matching category ids that I want to remove from the category listing.

However, the way I'm doing it in the 2nd function seems to me to be pretty crude, for lack of a better term. How could I improve this lookup?

function admin_trim_category_description( $terms, $taxonomies )
{
    if( 'category' != $taxonomies[0] )return $terms;

    foreach( $terms as $key=>$term ) 
        { 
        $terms[$key]->description = strip_tags(substr( $term->description, 0, 75 ))."..."; 
        if(ce4_get_utility_cats($terms[$key]->term_id))
            {
            unset($terms[$key]);
            }
        } 
        return $terms;
}

function  ce4_get_utility_cats($cat_id)
{
    if($cat_id == get_cat_ID('category1') OR $cat_id == get_cat_ID('hidden') OR $cat_id == get_cat_ID('category2') OR $cat_id == get_cat_ID('category3'))
        {
        return true;
        }
        else
        {
        return false;
        }
}

EDIT: The above functions are called in the following manner...

add_action( 'admin_head-edit-tags.php', 'admin_edit_tags' );
function admin_edit_tags(){
    add_filter( 'get_terms', 'admin_trim_category_description', 10, 2 );
    }

Answer 1

function admin_trim_category_description( $terms, $taxonomies ){
  if( 'category' != $taxonomies[0] )return $terms;
  $whatever_categories = array('category1', 'hidden', 'category2', 'category3');

  foreach( $terms as $key => $term)
    if(!in_array($terms[$key]->name, $whatever_categories)) $terms[$key]->description = strip_tags(substr( $term->description, 0, 75 ))."...";
    else unset($terms[$key]);


  return $terms;
}

Answer 2

The only thing I can see which is blatantly inefficient is the fact that you call get_cat_ID for every category for every term. That's a db query for each function call.

It would be more efficient to call those functions before the foreach and put them in an array sent as a parameter to the function.

Answer 3

Perhaps try adding the terms you're checking for into an array, and then just check if the $cat_id is in the array. I want to say that there are functions similar to that, but I can't place them offhand. It would eliminate the need for the OR's