I prefer the FOR loop in terms of performance. FOREACH is a little slow when you go with more number of items.
If you perform more business logic with the instance then FOREACH performs faster.
Demonstration: I created a list of 10000000 instances and looping with FOR and FOREACH.
Time took to loop:
Below is the sample code.
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
List<TestClass> lst = new List<TestClass>();
for (int i = 1; i <= 10000000; i++)
{
TestClass obj = new TestClass() {
ID = i,
Name = "Name" + i.ToString()
};
lst.Add(obj);
}
DateTime start = DateTime.Now;
foreach (var obj in lst)
{
//obj.ID = obj.ID + 1;
//obj.Name = obj.Name + "1";
}
DateTime end = DateTime.Now;
var first = end.Subtract(start).TotalMilliseconds;
start = DateTime.Now;
for (int j = 0; j<lst.Count;j++)
{
//lst[j].ID = lst[j].ID + 1;
//lst[j].Name = lst[j].Name + "1";
}
end = DateTime.Now;
var second = end.Subtract(start).TotalMilliseconds;
}
}
public class TestClass
{
public long ID { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
If I uncomment the code inside the loop: Then, time took to loop:
Conclusion
If you do more business logic with the instance, then FOREACH is recommended.
If you are not doing much logic with the instance, then FOR is recommended.