I was doing some tests to find out what the speed differences are between using getters/setters and direct field access. I wrote a simple benchmark application like this:
public class FieldTest {
private int value = 0;
public void setValue(int value) {
this.value = value;
}
public int getValue() {
return this.value;
}
public static void doTest(int num) {
FieldTest f = new FieldTest();
// test direct field access
long start1 = System.nanoTime();
for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) {
f.value = f.value + 1;
}
f.value = 0;
long diff1 = System.nanoTime() - start1;
// test method field access
long start2 = System.nanoTime();
for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) {
f.setValue(f.getValue() + 1);
}
f.setValue(0);
long diff2 = System.nanoTime() - start2;
// print results
System.out.printf("Field Access: %d ns\n", diff1);
System.out.printf("Method Access: %d ns\n", diff2);
System.out.println();
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
int num = 2147483647;
// wait for the VM to warm up
Thread.sleep(1000);
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
doTest(num);
}
}
}
Whenever I run it, I get consistent results such as these: http://pastebin.com/hcAtjVCL
I was wondering if someone could explain to me why field access seems to be slower than getter/setter method access, and also why the last 8 iterations execute incredibly fast.
Edit: Having taken into account assylias
and Stephen C
comments, I have changed the code to http://pastebin.com/Vzb8hGdc where I got slightly different results: http://pastebin.com/wxiDdRix .