In C#/VB.NET/.NET, which loop runs faster, for
or foreach
?
Ever since I read that a for
loop works faster than a foreach
First, a counter-claim to Dmitry's (now deleted) answer. For arrays, the C# compiler emits largely the same code for foreach
as it would for an equivalent for
loop. That explains why for this benchmark, the results are basically the same:
using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Linq;
class Test
{
const int Size = 1000000;
const int Iterations = 10000;
static void Main()
{
double[] data = new double[Size];
Random rng = new Random();
for (int i=0; i < data.Length; i++)
{
data[i] = rng.NextDouble();
}
double correctSum = data.Sum();
Stopwatch sw = Stopwatch.StartNew();
for (int i=0; i < Iterations; i++)
{
double sum = 0;
for (int j=0; j < data.Length; j++)
{
sum += data[j];
}
if (Math.Abs(sum-correctSum) > 0.1)
{
Console.WriteLine("Summation failed");
return;
}
}
sw.Stop();
Console.WriteLine("For loop: {0}", sw.ElapsedMilliseconds);
sw = Stopwatch.StartNew();
for (int i=0; i < Iterations; i++)
{
double sum = 0;
foreach (double d in data)
{
sum += d;
}
if (Math.Abs(sum-correctSum) > 0.1)
{
Console.WriteLine("Summation failed");
return;
}
}
sw.Stop();
Console.WriteLine("Foreach loop: {0}", sw.ElapsedMilliseconds);
}
}
Results:
For loop: 16638
Foreach loop: 16529
Next, validation that Greg's point about the collection type being important - change the array to a List
in the above, and you get radically different results. Not only is it significantly slower in general, but foreach becomes significantly slower than accessing by index. Having said that, I would still almost always prefer foreach to a for loop where it makes the code simpler - because readability is almost always important, whereas micro-optimisation rarely is.