anyone care to explain why passing a large type vs a small type to a function is slower? A type is just a reference (pointer) to some memory location of where the actual data for the type is.
Also why would reading fields from a type be any slower based on the size of the type? Offsets to fields I don't recall are computed iteratively [unless done at compile time].
I ask this because I wonder if the compiler is optimised to use params quicker than fields of a potential big type or vice cersa?
only scenario I can see happening where it might matter is if you have a large param list of primitives (int, float, etc) which aren't objects. So the method would copy them by value each time the method was called, instead of just directly accessing them inside the method through the type's fields. I guess if you had a large list of objects in the param list it could cause the same issue due to copying references (not the actual object) to the variable names.
Also why would reading fields from a type be any slower based on the size of the type? Offsets to fields I don't recall are computed iteratively [unless done at compile time].
I ask this because I wonder if the compiler is optimised to use params quicker than fields of a potential big type or vice cersa?
only scenario I can see happening where it might matter is if you have a large param list of primitives (int, float, etc) which aren't objects. So the method would copy them by value each time the method was called, instead of just directly accessing them inside the method through the type's fields. I guess if you had a large list of objects in the param list it could cause the same issue due to copying references (not the actual object) to the variable names.