Generics vs. Array Lists

Question

The system I work on here was written before .net 2.0 and didn\'t have the benefit of generics. It was eventually updated to 2.0, but none of the code was refactored due to

Answer 1

Here's the results I got from a simple parsing of a string from a 100KB file 100,000 times. The Generic List(Of char) took 612.293 seconds to go 100,000 times through the file. The ArrayList took 2,880.415 seconds to go 100,000 times through the file. This means in this scenario (as your mileage will vary) the Generic List(Of char) is 4.7 times faster.

Here is the code I ran through 100,000 times:

Public Sub Run(ByVal strToProcess As String) Implements IPerfStub.Run
    Dim genList As New ArrayList

    For Each ch As Char In strToProcess.ToCharArray
        genList.Add(ch)
    Next

    Dim dummy As New System.Text.StringBuilder()
    For i As Integer = 0 To genList.Count - 1
        dummy.Append(genList(i))
    Next

End Sub

 Public Sub Run(ByVal strToProcess As String) Implements IPerfStub.Run
     Dim genList As New List(Of Char)

     For Each ch As Char In strToProcess.ToCharArray
         genList.Add(ch)
     Next

     Dim dummy As New System.Text.StringBuilder()
     For i As Integer = 0 To genList.Count - 1
         dummy.Append(genList(i))
     Next
 End Sub