Question

Is it better to declare a variable used in a loop outside of the loop rather then inside? Sometimes I see examples where a variable is declared inside the loop. Does this effectively cause the program to allocate memory for a new variable each time the loop runs? Or is .NET smart enough to know that it’s really the same variable.

For example see the code below from this answer.

public static void CopyStream(Stream input, Stream output)
{
    byte[] buffer = new byte[32768];
    while (true)
    {
        int read = input.Read (buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
        if (read <= 0)
            return;
        output.Write (buffer, 0, read);
    }
}

Would this modified version be any more efficent?

public static void CopyStream(Stream input, Stream output)
{
    int read; //OUTSIDE LOOP
    byte[] buffer = new byte[32768];
    while (true)
    {
        read = input.Read (buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
        if (read <= 0)
            return;
        output.Write (buffer, 0, read);
    }
}

Answer 1

No, it wouldn’t be more efficient. However, I’d rewrite it this way which happens to declare it outside the loop anyway:

byte[] buffer = new byte[32768];
int read;
while ((read = input.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
{
    output.Write(buffer, 0, read);
}

I’m not generally a fan of using side-effects in conditions, but effectively the Read method is giving you two bits of data: whether or not you’ve reached the end of the stream, and how much you’ve read. The while loop is now saying, “While we’ve managed to read some data… copy it.”

It’s a little bit like using int.TryParse:

if (int.TryParse(text, out value))
{
    // Use value
}

Again you’re using a side-effect of calling the method in the condition. As I say, I don’t make a habit out of doing this except for this particular pattern, when you’re dealing with a method returning two bits of data.

The same thing comes up reading lines from a TextReader:

string line;
while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
    ...
}

To go back to your original question: if a variable is going to be initialized in every iteration of a loop and it’s only used within the body of the loop, I’d almost always declare it within the loop. One minor exception here is if the variable is being captured by an anonymous function – at that point it will make a difference in behaviour, and I’d pick whichever form gave me the desired behaviour… but that’s almost always the “declare inside” form anyway.

EDIT: When it comes to scoping, the code above does indeed leave the variable in a larger scope than it needs to be… but I believe it makes the loop clearer. You can always address this by introducing a new scope if you care to:

{
    int read;
    while (...)
    {
    }
}