What is the fastest way to compare two byte arrays?

Question

I am trying to compare two long bytearrays in VB.NET and have run into a snag. Comparing two 50 megabyte files takes almost two minutes, so I\'m clearly doing something wron

Answer 1

What is the _Bytes(I) call doing? It's not loading the file each time, is it? Even with buffering, that would be bad news!

There will be plenty of ways to micro-optimise this in terms of looking at longs at a time, potentially using unsafe code etc - but I'd just concentrate on getting reasonable performance first. Clearly there's something very odd going on.

I suggest you extract the comparison code into a separate function which takes two byte arrays. That way you know you won't be doing anything odd. I'd also use a simple For loop rather than For Each in this case - it'll be simpler. Oh, and check whether the lengths are correct first :)

EDIT: Here's the code (untested, but simple enough) that I'd use. It's in C# for the minute - I'll convert it in a sec:

public static bool Equals(byte[] first, byte[] second)
{
    if (first == second)
    {
        return true;
    }
    if (first == null || second == null)
    {
        return false;
    }
    if (first.Length != second.Length)
    {
        return false;
    }
    for (int i=0; i < first.Length; i++)
    {
        if (first[i] != second[i])                
        {
            return false;
        }
    }
    return true;
}

EDIT: And here's the VB:

Public Shared Function ArraysEqual(ByVal first As Byte(), _
                                   ByVal second As Byte()) As Boolean
    If (first Is second) Then
        Return True
    End If

    If (first Is Nothing OrElse second Is Nothing) Then
        Return False
    End If
    If  (first.Length <> second.Length) Then
         Return False
    End If

    For i as Integer = 0 To first.Length - 1
        If (first(i) <> second(i)) Then
            Return False
        End If
    Next i
    Return True
End Function