Is the ranged based for loop beneficial to performance?

Question

Reading various questions here on Stack Overflow about C++ iterators and performance**, I started wondering if for(auto& elem : container) gets \"expan

Answer 1

Out of curiosity I decided to look at the assembly code for both approaches:

int foo1(const std::vector& v) {
    int res = 0;
    for (auto x : v)
        res += x;
    return res;
}

int foo2(const std::vector& v) {
    int res = 0;
    for (std::vector::const_iterator it = v.begin(); it != v.end(); ++it)
      res += *it;
    return res;
}

And the assembly code (with -O3 and gcc 4.6) is exactly the same for both approaches (code for foo2 is omitted, since it is exactly the same):

080486d4  > const&)>:
80486d4:       8b 44 24 04             mov    0x4(%esp),%eax
80486d8:       8b 10                   mov    (%eax),%edx
80486da:       8b 48 04                mov    0x4(%eax),%ecx
80486dd:       b8 00 00 00 00          mov    $0x0,%eax
80486e2:       39 ca                   cmp    %ecx,%edx
80486e4:       74 09                   je     80486ef  > const&)+0x1b>
80486e6:       03 02                   add    (%edx),%eax
80486e8:       83 c2 04                add    $0x4,%edx
80486eb:       39 d1                   cmp    %edx,%ecx
80486ed:       75 f7                   jne    80486e6  > const&)+0x12>
80486ef:       f3 c3                   repz ret 

So, yes, both approaches are the same.

UPDATE: The same observation holds for other containers (or element types) such as vector and map. In those cases, it is especially important to use a reference in the ranged-based loop. Otherwise a temporary is created and lots of extra code appears (in the previous examples it was not needed since the vector contained just int values).

For the case of map the C++ code snippet used is:

int foo1(const std::map& v) {
    int res = 0;
    for (const auto& x : v) {
        res += (x.first.size() + x.second.size());
    }
    return res;
}

int foo2(const std::map& v) {
    int res = 0;
    for (auto it = v.begin(), end = v.end(); it != end; ++it) {
        res += (it->first.size() + it->second.size());
    }
    return res;
}

And the assembly code (for both cases) is:

8048d70:       56                      push   %esi
8048d71:       53                      push   %ebx
8048d72:       31 db                   xor    %ebx,%ebx
8048d74:       83 ec 14                sub    $0x14,%esp
8048d77:       8b 74 24 20             mov    0x20(%esp),%esi
8048d7b:       8b 46 0c                mov    0xc(%esi),%eax
8048d7e:       83 c6 04                add    $0x4,%esi
8048d81:       39 f0                   cmp    %esi,%eax
8048d83:       74 1b                   je     8048da0 
8048d85:       8d 76 00                lea    0x0(%esi),%esi
8048d88:       8b 50 10                mov    0x10(%eax),%edx
8048d8b:       03 5a f4                add    -0xc(%edx),%ebx
8048d8e:       8b 50 14                mov    0x14(%eax),%edx
8048d91:       03 5a f4                add    -0xc(%edx),%ebx
8048d94:       89 04 24                mov    %eax,(%esp)
8048d97:       e8 f4 fb ff ff          call   8048990 
8048d9c:       39 c6                   cmp    %eax,%esi
8048d9e:       75 e8                   jne    8048d88 
8048da0:       83 c4 14                add    $0x14,%esp
8048da3:       89 d8                   mov    %ebx,%eax
8048da5:       5b                      pop    %ebx
8048da6:       5e                      pop    %esi
8048da7:       c3                      ret