C# 'ref' keyword, performance

c# performance ref
David Anderson picture David Anderson · May 23, 2009 · Viewed 11.8k times · Source

If you have a Bitmap object that needs to be passed to numerous methods (about 10), and finally to an event where it shall finally be disposed of after it's used, would it be (performance wise) beneficial to pass it to every one of those methods by reference instead of value?

Passing by value, the object is copied, passing by reference its not.

(Performance is critical in this situation. The application needs to run as fast as possible.)

Answer

David Nelson picture David Nelson · May 23, 2009

Bitmap is a reference type. Passing a reference type by value does not copy the object, merely the reference to the object. There would be no performance benefit to passing the Bitmap by reference instead of by value.

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