NSEnumerator performance vs for loop in Cocoa

Question

I know that if you have a loop that modifies the count of the items in the loop, using the NSEnumerator on a set is the best way to make sure your code blows up, however I would like to understand the performance tradeoffs between the NSEnumerator class and just an old school for loop

Answer 1

Using the new for (... in ...) syntax in Objective-C 2.0 is generally the fastest way to iterate over a collection because it can maintain a buffer on the stack and get batches of items into it.

Using NSEnumerator is generally the slowest way because it often copies the collection being iterated; for immutable collections this can be cheap (equivalent to -retain) but for mutable collections it can cause an immutable copy to be created.

Doing your own iteration — for example, using -[NSArray objectAtIndex:] — will generally fall somewhere in between because while you won't have the potential copying overhead, you also won't be getting batches of objects from the underlying collection.

(PS - This question should be tagged as Objective-C, not C, since NSEnumerator is a Cocoa class and the new for (... in ...) syntax is specific to Objective-C.)

Answer 2

After running the test several times, the result is almost the same. Each measure block runs 10 times consecutively.

The result in my case from the fastest to the slowest:

1. For..in (testPerformanceExample3) (0.006 sec)
2. While (testPerformanceExample4) (0.026 sec)
3. For(;;) (testPerformanceExample1) (0.027 sec)
4. Enumeration block (testPerformanceExample2) (0.067 sec)

The for and while loop is almost the same.

The tmp is an NSArray which contains 1 million objects from 0 to 999999.

- (NSArray *)createArray
{
    self.tmpArray = [NSMutableArray array];
    for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)
    {
        [self.tmpArray addObject:@(i)];
    }
    return self.tmpArray;
}

The whole code:

ViewController.h

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface ViewController : UIViewController

@property (strong, nonatomic) NSMutableArray *tmpArray;
- (NSArray *)createArray;

@end

ViewController.m

#import "ViewController.h"

@implementation ViewController

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];
    [self createArray];
}

- (NSArray *)createArray
{
    self.tmpArray = [NSMutableArray array];
    for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)
    {
        [self.tmpArray addObject:@(i)];
    }
    return self.tmpArray;
}

@end

MyTestfile.m

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#import <XCTest/XCTest.h>

#import "ViewController.h"

@interface TestCaseXcodeTests : XCTestCase
{
    ViewController *vc;
    NSArray *tmp;
}

@end

@implementation TestCaseXcodeTests

- (void)setUp {
    [super setUp];
    vc = [[ViewController alloc] init];
    tmp = vc.createArray;
}

- (void)testPerformanceExample1
{
    [self measureBlock:^{
        for (int i = 0; i < [tmp count]; i++)
        {
            [tmp objectAtIndex:i];
        }
    }];
}

- (void)testPerformanceExample2
{
    [self measureBlock:^{
        [tmp enumerateObjectsUsingBlock:^(NSNumber *obj, NSUInteger idx, BOOL *stop) {
           obj;
        }];
    }];
}

- (void)testPerformanceExample3
{
    [self measureBlock:^{
        for (NSNumber *num in tmp)
        {
            num;
        }
    }];
}

- (void)testPerformanceExample4
{
    [self measureBlock:^{
        int i = 0;
        while (i < [tmp count])
        {
            [tmp objectAtIndex:i];
            i++;
        }
    }];
}

@end

For more information visit: Apples "About Testing with Xcode"