Which is faster? ByVal or ByRef?

Question

In VB.NET, which is faster to use for method arguments, ByVal or ByRef?

Also, which consumes more resources at runtime (RAM)?

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Answer 1

It depends. If you are passing an object, it is already passing a pointer. That's why if you pass in an ArrayList (for instance) and your method adds somthing to the ArrayList, then the calling code also has the same object into it's ArrayList, that was passed in, because it's the same ArrayList. The only time that it doesn't pass a pointer, is when you pass a variable with an intrinsic data type, like an int, or a double, into the function. At that point, it creates a copy. However, the data size of these objects is so small, that it would hardly make a difference either way, in terms of memory usage or speed of execution.