VB.NET - Loop Over String Chars

Char For String Chars String Length

Loop over String. For and For-Each loops pass over Chars in Strings. With these loops we access each individual character. We then can make a decision based on its value.

We demonstrate String loops in VB.NET. Further, we test the performance of accessing the Length and storing it in a local variable outside of the loop.

This program declares a String that contains some characters. Next, the For-Each loop is used. It declares a variable for the loop (element) and uses the For Each, As, In syntax.

And The For-loop is next—it uses the For, As, To syntax. This is the standard loop syntax in VB.NET.

Note The value after To (input.Length-1) has one subtracted from the max. This means the maximum index is one less than the length.

Detail The characters in the input string are accessed separately and printed the screen.

Detail In the For-loop, we get the Char with an element indexing expression (input(i)).

Module Module1
    Sub Main()
        ' Input string.
        Dim input As String = "abc"

        Console.WriteLine("-- For Each --")

        ' Use For Each loop on string.
        For Each element As Char In input
            Console.WriteLine(element)
        Next

        Console.WriteLine("-- For --")

        ' Use For loop on string.
        For i As Integer = 0 To input.Length - 1
            Dim c As Char = input(i)
            Console.WriteLine(c)
        Next
    End Sub
End Module-- For Each --
a
b
c
-- For --
a
b
c

Benchmark, length cache. Should we store the length of the string in local, and access that, for the fastest string loop? Here we test 2 versions of a method that loops over a string.

Version 1 The Length of the string is accessed directly in the loop bounds (we use a For-loop here).

Version 2 A local variable (length) is used to store the length of the string. We then access that in the loop expression.

Result We do not get any benefit from storing Length is a local variable in VB.NET.

Module Module1

    Sub Main()
        Dim m As Integer = 10000000
        Dim s1 As Stopwatch = Stopwatch.StartNew
        For i As Integer = 0 To m - 1
            ' Version 1: do not store length in local variable.
            A()
        Next
        s1.Stop()

        Dim s2 As Stopwatch = Stopwatch.StartNew
        For i As Integer = 0 To m - 1
            ' Version 2: store length in local.
            B()
        Next
        s2.Stop()

        Dim u As Integer = 1000000
        Console.WriteLine(((s1.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds * u) / m).ToString("0.00 ns"))
        Console.WriteLine(((s2.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds * u) / m).ToString("0.00 ns"))
    End Sub

    Sub A()
        Dim value As String = "birds of a feather"
        Dim sum As Integer = 0
        For i As Integer = 0 To value.Length - 1
            If value(i) = "a" Then
                sum += 1
            End If
        Next
    End Sub

    Sub B()
        Dim value As String = "birds of a feather"
        Dim sum As Integer = 0
        Dim lengthCache As Integer = value.Length - 1
        For i As Integer = 0 To lengthCache
            If value(i) = "a" Then
                sum += 1
            End If
        Next
    End Sub
End Module294.88 ns    Access length in For-statement (Faster)
297.07 ns    Use local variable for length

A summary. Looping over the characters in a String is common. We can test for invalid characters, search for a certain sequence of characters, or build up a separate data structure.