Does the VB.NET “If” operator cause boxing?

Question

Those of us who\'ve worked in VB/VB.NET have seen code similar to this abomination:

Dim name As String = IIf(obj Is Nothing, \"\", obj.Name)

<

Answer 1

The main thing is that you correctly identified the new If as an operator rather than a function. It is also typesafe and therefore does not need boxing, and is a direct mapping to the conditional/ternary/? operator in C/C++/C#/Java/etc

Even without the new operator, you can get some improvement in VB.Net with this code:

Public Shared Function IIf(Of T)(ByVal Expression As Boolean, ByVal TruePart As T, ByVal FalsePart As T) As T
    If Expression Then Return TruePart Else Return FalsePart
End Function

Answer 2

Joel beat me to an answer, but here is a sample program and the generated IL that demonstrates that If() passes through to the IL's underlying ternary operator without boxing.

Public Class Test
    Public Sub New()
        Dim rnd = New Random()
        Dim result As Integer = If(rnd.Next(1000) < 500, 1, -1)
        Console.WriteLine(result)
    End Sub
End Class

As you can see the IL has no 'box' statement.

.method public specialname rtspecialname instance void .ctor() cil managed
{
    .maxstack 2
    .locals init (
        [0] int32 result,
        [1] class [mscorlib]System.Random rnd)
    L_0000: nop 
    L_0001: ldarg.0 
    L_0002: call instance void [mscorlib]System.Object::.ctor()
    L_0007: nop 
    L_0008: newobj instance void [mscorlib]System.Random::.ctor()
    L_000d: stloc.1 
    L_000e: ldloc.1 
    L_000f: ldc.i4 0x3e8
    L_0014: callvirt instance int32 [mscorlib]System.Random::Next(int32)
    L_0019: ldc.i4 500
    L_001e: blt.s L_0023
    L_0020: ldc.i4.m1 
    L_0021: br.s L_0024
    L_0023: ldc.i4.1 
    L_0024: stloc.0 
    L_0025: ldloc.0 
    L_0026: call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(int32)
    L_002b: nop 
    L_002c: nop 
    L_002d: ret 
}

Given the same program but using the older IIf() function, the following IL is produced. You can see both the boxing, and the function call overhead:

.method public specialname rtspecialname instance void .ctor() cil managed
{
    .maxstack 3
    .locals init (
        [0] int32 result,
        [1] class [mscorlib]System.Random rnd)
    L_0000: nop 
    L_0001: ldarg.0 
    L_0002: call instance void [mscorlib]System.Object::.ctor()
    L_0007: nop 
    L_0008: newobj instance void [mscorlib]System.Random::.ctor()
    L_000d: stloc.1 
    L_000e: ldloc.1 
    L_000f: ldc.i4 0x3e8
    L_0014: callvirt instance int32 [mscorlib]System.Random::Next(int32)
    L_0019: ldc.i4 500
    L_001e: clt 
    L_0020: ldc.i4.1 
    L_0021: box int32
    L_0026: ldc.i4.m1 
    L_0027: box int32
    L_002c: call object [Microsoft.VisualBasic]Microsoft.VisualBasic.Interaction::IIf(bool, object, object)
    L_0031: call int32 [Microsoft.VisualBasic]Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.Conversions::ToInteger(object)
    L_0036: stloc.0 
    L_0037: ldloc.0 
    L_0038: call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(int32)
    L_003d: nop 
    L_003e: nop 
    L_003f: ret 
}