programmatically find memory used by object

Question

Is there a way to programmatically and accurately determine the amount of memory used by an object in c#? I am not concerned with how slow the process is, so running GCs left a

Answer 1

another idea is to have a helper class to do this by reflecting the object and extract its all data members and gather all fields size by sizeof() , it will be a little bit complicated but it is implementable

this class will calculate the actual size of an object , but i have tested it just a few times and a few objects were tested but i think i will be working.

public class SizeHelper
{
    private static int GetTypeSizeArray(string typeName, object objValue)
    {
        switch (typeName)
        {
            case "System.Double[]":
                return sizeof(System.Double) * ((System.Double[]) objValue).Length ;
            case "System.Single[]":
                return sizeof(System.Single) * ((System.Single[])objValue).Length;
            case "System.Char[]":
                return sizeof(System.Char) * ((System.Char[])objValue).Length;
            case "System.Int16[]":
                return sizeof(System.Int16) * ((System.Int16[])objValue).Length;
            case "System.Int32[]":
                return sizeof(System.Int32) * ((System.Int32[])objValue).Length;
            case "System.Int64[]":
                return sizeof(System.Int64) * ((System.Int64[])objValue).Length;
            case "System.UInt16[]":
                return sizeof(System.UInt16) * ((System.UInt16[])objValue).Length;
            case "System.UInt32[]":
                return sizeof(System.UInt32) * ((System.UInt32[])objValue).Length;
            case "System.UInt64[]":
                return sizeof(System.UInt64) * ((System.UInt64[])objValue).Length;
            case "System.Decimal[]":
                return sizeof(System.Decimal) * ((System.Decimal[])objValue).Length;
            case "System.Byte[]":
                return sizeof(System.Byte) * ((System.Byte[])objValue).Length;
            case "System.SByte[]":
                return sizeof(System.SByte) * ((System.SByte[])objValue).Length;
            case "System.Boolean":
                return sizeof (System.Boolean)*((System.Boolean[]) objValue).Length;
            default:
                return 0;
        }
    }

    public static int GetSize(object obj)
    {
        Type t = obj.GetType();

        FieldInfo[] fields = t.GetFields(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Static);
        int size = 0;
        foreach (FieldInfo fieldInfo in fields)
        {
            if (fieldInfo.FieldType.BaseType.FullName.Equals("System.ValueType"))
            {
                size += GetTypeSize(fieldInfo.FieldType.FullName);
            }
            else if (fieldInfo.FieldType.BaseType.FullName.Equals("System.Array"))
            {
                var subObj = fieldInfo.GetValue(obj);
                if (subObj != null)
                    size += GetTypeSizeArray(fieldInfo.FieldType.FullName, subObj);
            }
            else if(fieldInfo.FieldType.FullName.Equals("System.String"))
            {
                var subObj = fieldInfo.GetValue(obj);
                if (subObj != null)
                {
                    size += subObj.ToString().Length*sizeof (System.Char);
                }
            }
            else
            {
                var subObj = fieldInfo.GetValue(obj);
                if (subObj != null)
                    size += GetSize(subObj);
            }
        }
        return size;
    }

    private static int GetTypeSize(string typeName)
    {
        switch (typeName)
        {
            case "System.Double":
                return sizeof(System.Double);
            case "System.Single":
                return sizeof(System.Single);
            case "System.Char":
                return sizeof(System.Char);
            case "System.Int16":
                return sizeof(System.Int16);
            case "System.Int32":
                return sizeof(System.Int32);
            case "System.Int64":
                return sizeof(System.Int64);
            case "System.UInt16":
                return sizeof(System.UInt16);
            case "System.UInt32":
                return sizeof(System.UInt32);
            case "System.UInt64":
                return sizeof(System.UInt64);
            case "System.Decimal":
                return sizeof(System.Decimal);
            case "System.Byte":
                return sizeof(System.Byte);
            case "System.SByte":
                return sizeof(System.SByte);
             case "System.Boolean":
                return sizeof (System.Boolean);
            default:
                return 0;
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

object obj = new List<int>(); // whatever you want to get the size of
RuntimeTypeHandle th = obj.GetType().TypeHandle;
int size = *(*(int**)&th + 1);
Console.WriteLine(size);

I dont know whether it is useful to you or not...but try to refer this link...espacialy fig.4

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163791.aspx#S9