Is there a performance difference between a for loop and a for-each loop?

Question

What, if any, is the performance difference between the following two loops?

for (Object o: objectArrayList) {
    o.DoSomething();
}

and <

Answer 1

It's always better to use the iterator instead of indexing. This is because iterator is most likely optimzied for the List implementation while indexed (calling get) might not be. For example LinkedList is a List but indexing through its elements will be slower than iterating using the iterator.

Answer 2

All these loops do the exact same, I just want to show these before throwing in my two cents.

First, the classic way of looping through List:

for (int i=0; i < strings.size(); i++) { /* do something using strings.get(i) */ }

Second, the preferred way since it's less error prone (how many times have YOU done the "oops, mixed the variables i and j in these loops within loops" thing?).

for (String s : strings) { /* do something using s */ }

Third, the micro-optimized for loop:

int size = strings.size();
for (int i = -1; ++i < size;) { /* do something using strings.get(i) */ }

Now the actual two cents: At least when I was testing these, the third one was the fastest when counting milliseconds on how long it took for each type of loop with a simple operation in it repeated a few million times - this was using Java 5 with jre1.6u10 on Windows in case anyone is interested.

While it at least seems to be so that the third one is the fastest, you really should ask yourself if you want to take the risk of implementing this peephole optimization everywhere in your looping code since from what I've seen, actual looping isn't usually the most time consuming part of any real program (or maybe I'm just working on the wrong field, who knows). And also like I mentioned in the pretext for the Java for-each loop (some refer to it as Iterator loop and others as for-in loop) you are less likely to hit that one particular stupid bug when using it. And before debating how this even can even be faster than the other ones, remember that javac doesn't optimize bytecode at all (well, nearly at all anyway), it just compiles it.

If you're into micro-optimization though and/or your software uses lots of recursive loops and such then you may be interested in the third loop type. Just remember to benchmark your software well both before and after changing the for loops you have to this odd, micro-optimized one.

Answer 3

From Item 46 in Effective Java by Joshua Bloch :

The for-each loop, introduced in release 1.5, gets rid of the clutter and the opportunity for error by hiding the iterator or index variable completely. The resulting idiom applies equally to collections and arrays:

// The preferred idiom for iterating over collections and arrays
for (Element e : elements) {
    doSomething(e);
}

When you see the colon (:), read it as “in.” Thus, the loop above reads as “for each element e in elements.” Note that there is no performance penalty for using the for-each loop, even for arrays. In fact, it may offer a slight performance advantage over an ordinary for loop in some circumstances, as it computes the limit of the array index only once. While you can do this by hand (Item 45), programmers don’t always do so.

Answer 4

The following code:

import java.lang.reflect.Array;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

interface Function<T> {
    long perform(T parameter, long x);
}

class MyArray<T> {

    T[] array;
    long x;

    public MyArray(int size, Class<T> type, long x) {
        array = (T[]) Array.newInstance(type, size);
        this.x = x;
    }

    public void forEach(Function<T> function) {
        for (T element : array) {
            x = function.perform(element, x);
        }
    }
}

class Compute {
    int factor;
    final long constant;

    public Compute(int factor, long constant) {
        this.factor = factor;
        this.constant = constant;
    }

    public long compute(long parameter, long x) {
        return x * factor + parameter + constant;
    }
}

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Long> numbers = new ArrayList<Long>(50000000);
        for (int i = 0; i < 50000000; i++) {
            numbers.add(i * i + 5L);
        }

        long x = 234553523525L;

        long time = System.currentTimeMillis();
        for (int i = 0; i < numbers.size(); i++) {
            x += x * 7 + numbers.get(i) + 3;
        }
        System.out.println(System.currentTimeMillis() - time);
        System.out.println(x);
        x = 0;
        time = System.currentTimeMillis();
        for (long i : numbers) {
            x += x * 7 + i + 3;
        }
        System.out.println(System.currentTimeMillis() - time);
        System.out.println(x);
        x = 0;
        numbers = null;
        MyArray<Long> myArray = new MyArray<Long>(50000000, Long.class, 234553523525L);
        for (int i = 0; i < 50000000; i++) {
            myArray.array[i] = i * i + 3L;
        }
        time = System.currentTimeMillis();
        myArray.forEach(new Function<Long>() {

            public long perform(Long parameter, long x) {
                return x * 8 + parameter + 5L;
            }
        });
        System.out.println(System.currentTimeMillis() - time);
        System.out.println(myArray.x);
        myArray = null;
        myArray = new MyArray<Long>(50000000, Long.class, 234553523525L);
        for (int i = 0; i < 50000000; i++) {
            myArray.array[i] = i * i + 3L;
        }
        time = System.currentTimeMillis();
        myArray.forEach(new Function<Long>() {

            public long perform(Long parameter, long x) {
                return new Compute(8, 5).compute(parameter, x);
            }
        });
        System.out.println(System.currentTimeMillis() - time);
        System.out.println(myArray.x);
    }
}

Gives following output on my system:

224
-699150247503735895
221
-699150247503735895
220
-699150247503735895
219
-699150247503735895

I'm running Ubuntu 12.10 alpha with OracleJDK 1.7 update 6.

In general HotSpot optimizes a lot of indirections and simple reduntant operations, so in general you shouldn't worry about them unless there are a lot of them in seqence or they are heavily nested.

On the other hand, indexed get on LinkedList is much slower than calling next on iterator for LinkedList so you can avoid that performance hit while retaining readability when you use iterators (explicitly or implicitly in for-each loop).