Java – .toArray(new MyClass[0]) or .toArray(new MyClass[theList.size()])

coding-stylejavaperformance

Assuming I have an ArrayList

ArrayList<MyClass> myList;

And I want to call toArray, is there a performance reason to use

MyClass[] arr = myList.toArray(new MyClass[myList.size()]);

over

MyClass[] arr = myList.toArray(new MyClass[0]);

?

I prefer the second style, since it's less verbose, and I assumed that the compiler will make sure the empty array doesn't really get created, but I've been wondering if that's true.

Of course, in 99% of the cases it doesn't make a difference one way or the other, but I'd like to keep a consistent style between my normal code and my optimized inner loops…

Best Answer

Counterintuitively, the fastest version, on Hotspot 8, is:

MyClass[] arr = myList.toArray(new MyClass[0]);

I have run a micro benchmark using jmh the results and code are below, showing that the version with an empty array consistently outperforms the version with a presized array. Note that if you can reuse an existing array of the correct size, the result may be different.

Benchmark results (score in microseconds, smaller = better):

Benchmark                      (n)  Mode  Samples    Score   Error  Units
c.a.p.SO29378922.preSize         1  avgt       30    0.025 ▒ 0.001  us/op
c.a.p.SO29378922.preSize       100  avgt       30    0.155 ▒ 0.004  us/op
c.a.p.SO29378922.preSize      1000  avgt       30    1.512 ▒ 0.031  us/op
c.a.p.SO29378922.preSize      5000  avgt       30    6.884 ▒ 0.130  us/op
c.a.p.SO29378922.preSize     10000  avgt       30   13.147 ▒ 0.199  us/op
c.a.p.SO29378922.preSize    100000  avgt       30  159.977 ▒ 5.292  us/op
c.a.p.SO29378922.resize          1  avgt       30    0.019 ▒ 0.000  us/op
c.a.p.SO29378922.resize        100  avgt       30    0.133 ▒ 0.003  us/op
c.a.p.SO29378922.resize       1000  avgt       30    1.075 ▒ 0.022  us/op
c.a.p.SO29378922.resize       5000  avgt       30    5.318 ▒ 0.121  us/op
c.a.p.SO29378922.resize      10000  avgt       30   10.652 ▒ 0.227  us/op
c.a.p.SO29378922.resize     100000  avgt       30  139.692 ▒ 8.957  us/op

For reference, the code:

@State(Scope.Thread)
@BenchmarkMode(Mode.AverageTime)
public class SO29378922 {
  @Param({"1", "100", "1000", "5000", "10000", "100000"}) int n;
  private final List<Integer> list = new ArrayList<>();
  @Setup public void populateList() {
    for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) list.add(0);
  }
  @Benchmark public Integer[] preSize() {
    return list.toArray(new Integer[n]);
  }
  @Benchmark public Integer[] resize() {
    return list.toArray(new Integer[0]);
  }
}

You can find similar results, full analysis, and discussion in the blog post Arrays of Wisdom of the Ancients. To summarize: the JVM and JIT compiler contains several optimizations that enable it to cheaply create and initialize a new correctly sized array, and those optimizations can not be used if you create the array yourself.

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