C# StringBuilder Data Types

Measure StringBuilder Append performance with various data types like chars and ints.

StringBuilder appends different data types with overloads. What data types are fastest to Append? We can optimize StringBuilder code by choosing between data types when possible. We investigate the performance of data types.StringBuilder Optimization

Benchmark. First, when you call the Append or AppendLine methods on StringBuilder, you can pass in many different types. There are 19 overloads, many of which specify different types. Here we test the types for performance.

Note: This program is a simple benchmark framework that compares how similar data is appended.

C# program that tests data types using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Text; class Program { static void Main() { const int m = 100000; // Char versus Int Stopwatch s1 = Stopwatch.StartNew(); for (int i = 0; i < m; i++) { StringBuilder s = new StringBuilder(1000); for (int v = 0; v < 1000; v++) { s.Append(1); } } s1.Stop(); Stopwatch s2 = Stopwatch.StartNew(); for (int i = 0; i < m; i++) { StringBuilder s = new StringBuilder(1000); for (int v = 0; v < 1000; v++) { s.Append('1'); } } s2.Stop(); // Bool versus string Stopwatch s3 = Stopwatch.StartNew(); for (int i = 0; i < m; i++) { StringBuilder s = new StringBuilder(4000); for (int v = 0; v < 1000; v++) { s.Append(true); } } s3.Stop(); Stopwatch s4 = Stopwatch.StartNew(); for (int i = 0; i < m; i++) { StringBuilder s = new StringBuilder(4000); for (int v = 0; v < 1000; v++) { s.Append("True"); } } s4.Stop(); // Char versus string Stopwatch s5 = Stopwatch.StartNew(); for (int i = 0; i < m; i++) { StringBuilder s = new StringBuilder(1000); for (int v = 0; v < 1000; v++) { s.Append('a'); } } s5.Stop(); Stopwatch s6 = Stopwatch.StartNew(); for (int i = 0; i < m; i++) { StringBuilder s = new StringBuilder(1000); for (int v = 0; v < 1000; v++) { s.Append("a"); } } s6.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("{0},{1},{2},{3},{4},{5}", s1.ElapsedMilliseconds, s2.ElapsedMilliseconds, s3.ElapsedMilliseconds, s4.ElapsedMilliseconds, s5.ElapsedMilliseconds, s6.ElapsedMilliseconds); } }

The benchmark is divided into three pairs. The first pair tests a one-character int against the same text in char format. The second pair tests a bool against the same text in string format.

And: The third pair tests a char against its same text in string format. It uses a one-character string.

Note: In this benchmark you can only fairly compare the three pairs against their other halves.

Results: Appending a char is faster than appending an int. A string was faster than a bool. And a char was faster than a string.

StringBuilder parameter types test: Append int: 12677 ms Append char: 1328 ms [faster] Append bool: 2268 ms Append string 1: 2095 ms [faster] Append char: 1344 ms [faster] Append string 2: 1904 ms

Summary. We compared equivalent StringBuilder appended values. Note that the code samples may not be exactly equivalent in all cases. It is usually fastest to append chars, then strings, and then other types. Ints are the slowest here.StringBuilder Append

The Dev Codes

.Net

.NET Array Dictionary List String 2D Async DataTable Dates DateTime Enum File For Foreach Format IEnumerable If IndexOf Lambda LINQ Parse Path Process Property Regex Replace Sort Split Static StringBuilder Substring Switch Tuple

Java

Core Array ArrayList HashMap String 2D Cast Character Console Deque Duplicates File For Format HashSet If IndexOf Lambda Math ParseInt Process Random Regex Replace Sort Split StringBuilder Substring Switch Vector While

TheDeveloperBlog.com

C# StringBuilder Data Types

Related Links:

.Net

Java

Related Links