Which loop is faster, while or for?

user_1246275 0
Viewed 150305

You can get the same output with for and while loops:

While:

$i = 0;
while ($i <= 10){
  print $i."\n";
  $i++;
};

For:

for ($i = 0; $i <= 10; $i++){
  print $i."\n";
}

But which one is faster?

while-loop for-loop performance
17 Answers

I also tried to benchmark the different kinds of loop in C#. I used the same code as Shane, but I also tried with a do-while and found it to be the fastest. This is the code:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;


public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        int max = 9999999;
        Stopwatch stopWatch = new Stopwatch();

        Console.WriteLine("Do While Loop: ");
        stopWatch.Start();
        DoWhileLoop(max);
        stopWatch.Stop();
        DisplayElapsedTime(stopWatch.Elapsed);
        Console.WriteLine("");
        Console.WriteLine("");

        Console.WriteLine("While Loop: ");
        stopWatch.Start();
        WhileLoop(max);
        stopWatch.Stop();
        DisplayElapsedTime(stopWatch.Elapsed);
        Console.WriteLine("");
        Console.WriteLine("");

        Console.WriteLine("For Loop: ");
        stopWatch.Start();
        ForLoop(max);
        stopWatch.Stop();
        DisplayElapsedTime(stopWatch.Elapsed);
    }

    private static void DoWhileLoop(int max)
    {
        int i = 0;
        do
        {
            //Performe Some Operation. By removing Speed increases
            var j = 10 + 10;
            j += 25;
            i++;
        } while (i <= max);
    }

    private static void WhileLoop(int max)
    {
        int i = 0;
        while (i <= max)
        {
            //Performe Some Operation. By removing Speed increases
            var j = 10 + 10;
            j += 25;
            i++;
        };
    }

    private static void ForLoop(int max)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i <= max; i++)
        {
            //Performe Some Operation. By removing Speed increases
            var j = 10 + 10;
            j += 25;
        }
    }

    private static void DisplayElapsedTime(TimeSpan ts)
    {
        string elapsedTime = String.Format("{0:00}:{1:00}:{2:00}.{3:00}", ts.Hours, ts.Minutes, ts.Seconds, ts.Milliseconds / 10);
        Console.WriteLine(elapsedTime, "RunTime");
    }
}

and these are the results of a live demo on DotNetFiddle:

Do While Loop:
00:00:00.06

While Loop:
00:00:00.13

For Loop:
00:00:00.27

user_55164630

for loops are easier to parallelize than while loops using something like OpenMP

So if the code within the loop is sufficiently time-consuming, for loop and parallelize it.

For short snippets of code, you wouldn't want to parallelize since it'd take longer to spin up another thread (an expensive operation) than to simply finish the loop.. so either one seems to be about the same judging from the other answers.

user_33390890
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