Question

What’s more performant a Tuple<int, int> or a generic class as follows:

   public class Interval<T>
    {
       public T From, To;

       public static Interval<T> Create(T from, T to)
       {
          Interval<T> range = new Interval<T>();

                range.From = from;
                range.To = to;

                return range;
            }
        }
   }

Usage scenario – large collections (100K++) of these objects get filtered using LINQ. I currently have generic classes, thinking of moving to something more fat-free and hopefully faster. Wonder if I I’ll gain speed by switching to use Tuple‘s?

Answer 1

If you would look at the compiled code for a Tuple<int, int> and an Interval<int>, it would be hard to tell them apart.

The way that they are stored in memory will be identical.

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You can also consider using a struct instead of a class:

public struct Interval<T> {

   public T From { get; private set; }
   public T To { get; private set; }

   public Interval(T from, T to) {
     From = from;
     To = to;
   }

}

Structs have a value semantics, so the usage would be different in some cases. It is not as simple to implement a well working struct (e.g. implementing relevant comparison and conversion), but it would save you a lot of memory. A class has an overhead of about 12 or 24 bytes (depending on the platform), which you don’t get with a struct.