How performant is StackFrame?

Question

I am considering using something like StackFrame stackFrame = new StackFrame(1) to log the executing method, but I don\'t know about its performance implication

Answer 1

From the MSDN documentation, it seems like StackFrames are being created all the time:

A StackFrame is created and pushed on the call stack for every function call made during the execution of a thread. The stack frame always includes MethodBase information, and optionally includes file name, line number, and column number information.

The constructor new StackFrame(1) you'd call would do this:

private void BuildStackFrame(int skipFrames, bool fNeedFileInfo)
{
    StackFrameHelper sfh = new StackFrameHelper(fNeedFileInfo, null);
    StackTrace.GetStackFramesInternal(sfh, 0, null);
    int numberOfFrames = sfh.GetNumberOfFrames();
    skipFrames += StackTrace.CalculateFramesToSkip(sfh, numberOfFrames);
    if ((numberOfFrames - skipFrames) > 0)
    {
        this.method = sfh.GetMethodBase(skipFrames);
        this.offset = sfh.GetOffset(skipFrames);
        this.ILOffset = sfh.GetILOffset(skipFrames);
        if (fNeedFileInfo)
        {
            this.strFileName = sfh.GetFilename(skipFrames);
            this.iLineNumber = sfh.GetLineNumber(skipFrames);
            this.iColumnNumber = sfh.GetColumnNumber(skipFrames);
        }
    }
}

GetStackFramesInternal is an external method. CalculateFramesToSkip has a loop that operates exactly once, since you specified only 1 frame. Everything else looks pretty quick.

Have you tried measuring how long it would take to create, say, 1 million of them?