Enhanced for loop performance worse than traditional indexed lookup?

Question

I just came across this seemingly innocuous comment, benchmarking ArrayList vs a raw String array. It\'s from a couple years ago, but the OP writes

I

Answer 1

The problem you have is that using an Iterator will be slower than using a direct lookup. On my machine the difference is about 0.13 ns per iteration. Using an array instead saves about 0.15 ns per iteration. This should be trivial in 99% of situations.

public static void main(String... args) {
    int testLength = 100 * 1000 * 1000;
    String[] stringArray = new String[testLength];
    Arrays.fill(stringArray, "a");
    List stringList = new ArrayList(Arrays.asList(stringArray));
    {
        long start = System.nanoTime();
        long total = 0;
        for (String str : stringArray) {
            total += str.length();
        }
        System.out.printf("The for each Array loop time was %.2f ns total=%d%n", (double) (System.nanoTime() - start) / testLength, total);
    }
    {
        long start = System.nanoTime();
        long total = 0;
        for (int i = 0, stringListSize = stringList.size(); i < stringListSize; i++) {
            String str = stringList.get(i);
            total += str.length();
        }
        System.out.printf("The for/get List loop time was %.2f ns total=%d%n", (double) (System.nanoTime() - start) / testLength, total);
    }
    {
        long start = System.nanoTime();
        long total = 0;
        for (String str : stringList) {
            total += str.length();
        }
        System.out.printf("The for each List loop time was %.2f ns total=%d%n", (double) (System.nanoTime() - start) / testLength, total);
    }
}

When run with one billion entries entries prints (using Java 6 update 26.)

The for each Array loop time was 0.76 ns total=1000000000
The for/get List loop time was 0.91 ns total=1000000000
The for each List loop time was 1.04 ns total=1000000000

When run with one billion entries entries prints (using OpenJDK 7.)

The for each Array loop time was 0.76 ns total=1000000000
The for/get List loop time was 0.91 ns total=1000000000
The for each List loop time was 1.04 ns total=1000000000

i.e. exactly the same. ;)