C# foreach VS for loop

When I started using C#, mainly because of XNA one of the things I got used to write is foreach loops instead of for, seemed easier and it’s a much cleaner code. Doing almost the same thing as a for loop I never really bother to see the differences, almost everyone in their XNA examples used it instead.

Today I decided to see the differences between them:

FOR

int[] values = new int[1];
int total = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < values.Length; i++)
{
    total += values[i];
}

FOREACH

int[] values = new int[1];
int total = 0;
foreach(int i in values )
{
    total += i;
}

In variable declaration, foreach has five variable declarations (three Int32 integers and two arrays of Int32) while for has only three (two Int32 integers and one Int32 array). When it goes to loop through, foreach copies the current array to a new one for the operation. While for doesn’t care of that part.

After the compiler interpretation to Assembly we get this:

FOR

cmp     dword ptr [eax+4],0           i
jle     0000000F
mov     ecx,dword ptr [eax+edx*4+8]
inc     edx
cmp     esi,dword ptr [eax+4]
jl      FFFFFFF8

FOREACH

cmp     esi,dword ptr [ebx+4]          i
jl      FFFFFFE3
cmp     esi,dword ptr [ebx+4]
jb      00000009
mov     eax,dword ptr [ebx+esi*4+8]
mov     dword ptr [ebp-0Ch],eax
mov     eax,dword ptr [ebp-0Ch]
add     dword ptr [ebp-8],eax
inc     esi
cmp     esi,dword ptr [ebx+4]
jl      FFFFFFE3

As you can see we end up with much more instructions.
Some simple tests gives these results:

*Time is in milliseconds.

So what I’ve done after this was to replace some heavy foreach code on my engine by for loops. I guess small things can be neglected but it’s always nice to know where bottlenecks may happen.