Should LINQ be avoided because it's slow? [closed]

Answer 1

Your test case is a little skewed. The ANY operater will begin enumerating through your results and return true on the first instance if finds and quit. Try this with simple lists of strings to see the result. To answer your question about avoiding LINQ, you should really transition toward the use of LINQ. It makes code easier to read when doing complex queries in addition to compile time checking. Also you don't need to use the Cast operator in your example.

string compareMe = "Success";
string notEqual = "Not Success";

List headOfList = new List();
List midOfList = new List();
List endOfList = new List();

//Create a list of 999,999 items
List masterList = new List();
masterList.AddRange(Enumerable.Repeat(notEqual, 999999));

//put the true case at the head of the list
headOfList.Add(compareMe);
headOfList.AddRange(masterList);

//insert the true case in the middle of the list
midOfList.AddRange(masterList);
midOfList.Insert(masterList.Count/2, compareMe);

//insert the true case at the tail of the list
endOfList.AddRange(masterList);
endOfList.Add(compareMe);


Stopwatch stopWatch = new Stopwatch();

stopWatch.Start();
headOfList.Any(p=>p == compareMe);
stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds.Dump();
stopWatch.Reset();

stopWatch.Start();
midOfList.Any(p=>p == compareMe);
stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds.Dump();
stopWatch.Reset();

stopWatch.Start();
endOfList.Any(p=>p == compareMe);
stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds.Dump();
stopWatch.Stop();