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The cost of type tests and casts in C#

Awhile back I ran some tests comparing the dispatching performance of runtime tests+casts against double dispatch. Turned out runtime type tests and casting were noticeably faster than dispatching, probably because they avoid more pipeline stalls.

Unfortunately, there is a "common wisdom" in the .NET world that an "is" test followed by an "as" cast is performing two casts, and in fact one should simply perform the "as" cast then check the result against null:
// prefer this form
string a = o as string;
if (a != null)
{
Console.WriteLine(a);
}

// to this form:
if (o is string)
{
string a = o as string;
Console.WriteLine(a);
}

In fact, that's not the case, as any compiler worth its salt will coalesce the two tests into a single cast and branch operation. I took the tests from the above dispatching and altered them to perform the cast-and-null check, then I ran the tests again with the original is-then-as form. The latter form was about 6% faster on every timing run.

There's obviously some optimization being done here, but the lesson is: don't try to outsmart the compiler. In general, just write code the safe way and let the compiler optimize it for you. It's safer to perform a test then cast within a delimited scope like an if-statement, than to let the possibly null variable float around in the outer scope where you might use it inadvertently later in the method or during refactoring.

If performance turns out to be an issue, profile before trying these sorts of low-level "optimizations", because you might be surprised at the results.

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