This article provides a quick comparison between C++/CLI and C#. It’s meant for those who know C# (and possibly C++) and will explain which C++/CLI language construct correspond with which in C#. (I don’t know Visual Basic so I can’t add infos about this here.)

Note: This is not a complete reference but rather quick reference for those features that are (in my opinion) the most unclear.

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Just a quick overview over the different lock types and their performance in .NET.

For this test, the following method was called as fast as possible for 4 seconds:

private void TestMethod() {
  lock (this) { // this locking is replaced depending on the locking type
    counter++;
  }
}

Here are the results:

Full source code: Program.cs

For a project I was wondering what’s the performance penalty of using a C# struct (containing only one field) over using a local variable directly; i.e.:

int myVar;

vs.

struct MyStruct {
  int MyVar;
}

The result: There’s no (real) difference!

Here are some stats (“Release” build):

Running each test 50,000,000,000 times

Running 'UseLocalVar'...
Done in 61329.359 ms
Running 'UseStructField'...
Done in 61414.885 ms
Running 'UseStructProperty'...
Done in 121383.416 ms

The first two results are what I was talking about. The third result uses a property instead of a field in the struct. It’s two times slower.

Here’s the code for the benchmark:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;

class Benchmark {
  const long LOOPS = 50000000000;

  static void Main(string[] args) {
    Benchmark benchmark = new Benchmark();

    Console.WriteLine("Running each test {0:0,0} times", LOOPS);
    Console.WriteLine();

    Console.WriteLine("Running 'UseLocalVar'...");
    Stopwatch stopWatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
    int test = 0;
    for (long x = 0; x < LOOPS; x++) {
      test += benchmark.UseLocalVar((int)x);
    }
    TimeSpan elapsed = stopWatch.Elapsed;
    Console.WriteLine("Done in {0:0.000} ms", elapsed.TotalMilliseconds);


    Console.WriteLine("Running 'UseStructField'...");
    stopWatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
    test = 0;
    for (long x = 0; x < LOOPS; x++) {
      test += benchmark.UseStructField((int)x);
    }
    elapsed = stopWatch.Elapsed;
    Console.WriteLine("Done in {0:0.000} ms", elapsed.TotalMilliseconds);


    Console.WriteLine("Running 'UseStructProperty'...");
    stopWatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
    test = 0;
    for (long x = 0; x < LOOPS; x++) {
      test += benchmark.UseStructProperty((int)x);
    }
    elapsed = stopWatch.Elapsed;
    Console.WriteLine("Done in {0:0.000} ms", elapsed.TotalMilliseconds);
  }

  int UseLocalVar(int val) {
    int test = val;
    test = test + val;
    return test;
  }

  int UseStructField(int val) {
    TestStructField test = new TestStructField(val);
    test.Value = test.Value + val;
    return test.Value;
  }

  int UseStructProperty(int val) {
    TestStructProperty test = new TestStructProperty(val);
    test.Value = test.Value + val;
    return test.Value;
  }

  private struct TestStructField {
    public int Value;

    public TestStructField(int value) {
      this.Value = value;
    }
  }

  private struct TestStructProperty {
    public int Value { get; set; }

    public TestStructProperty(int value) : this() {
      this.Value = value;
    }
  }
}

P/Invoke is a way of calling C/C++ functions from a .NET program. It’s very easy to use. This article will cover the basics of using P/Invoke.

Note: This tutorial will focus on Windows and thus use Visual Studio. If you’re developing on another platform or with another IDE, adopting the things in this article should be easy enough.

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The .NET framework features an interface called IDisposable. It basically exists to allow freeing unmanaged resources (think: C++ pointers). In most cases, you won’t need IDisposable when writing C# code. There are some exceptions though, and it becomes more important when writing C++/CLI code.

The help page for IDisposable provides the code for IDisposable‘s default implementation pattern in C#. This article will explain each part of it step by step and also provide the equivalent C++/CLI code in each step.

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