Is it costly to do array.length or list.count in a loop

Question

I know that in JavaScript, creating a for loop like this: for(int i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) is costly as it computes the array length each time. Is this behavior costly in c# for lists and arrays as well. Or at compile-time is it optimized? Also what about other languages such as Java, how is this handled?

Answer 1

It is not costly in C#. For one thing, there is no “calculation“: querying the length is basically an elementary operation thanks to inlining. And secondly, because (according to its developers), the compiler recognizes this pattern of access and will in fact optimize any (redundant) boundary checks for access on array elements.

And by the way, I believe that something similar is true for modern JavaScript virtual machines, and if it isn't already, it will be very soon since this is a trivial optimization.

Answer 2

1. All .Net arrays have a field containing the length of the array, so the length is not computed at usage but at creation time.

2. The .Net virtual machine is very good at eliminating bounds checks whenever possible, this is one of those cases, where the bounds check is moved outside the loop (in most situations, and if not it's just 2 instructions overhead).

Edit:

Array Bounds Check Elimination