C# - new CultureInfo instantiation performance

Question

I was wondering if it was a good practice to instantiate a CultureInfo object repeatdedly in a loop process (few thousand times). This object is required in many Date and String methods to force a specific culture when CurrentCulture may not be the right one.

var c = new CultureInfo("en-US", false);

What is the performance of a repeated instantiation?

Polynomial

Why not benchmark it yourself? – Nosing

Have you demonstrated that your current application doesn't meet your current performance needs and that this particular line of code is using a considerable amount of your resources? If no, don't waste your time looking into it. – Albaugh

Of course I know how and when to optimize an application. This is a legitimate knowledge question so you understand what is going on if you have problem down the line. Much like understanding the algorithmic complexity of a data structure. Why use Dictionnary when you can use a List with Where? – Polynomial

Answer 1

One would think that the optimizer in the C# and/or the JIT compilers would have the smarts to recognize a loop-invariant expression and refactor outside of the loop. My inclination is to do such refactorings myself as is makes the code clearer.

Even better, use this method:

CultureInfo ci = CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("en-US") ;

It gives you a cached, read-only instance, the instance will only be constructed once and thence retrieve from cache.

Better yet, for your stated purposes:

This [CultureInfo] object is required in many Date and String methods to force a specific culture when CurrentCulture may not be the right one.

use CultureInfo.InvariantCulture. That is what it exists for.

A third option, would be to create a static CultureInfo property holding a singleton reference to your fallback culture. Depending on your purposed, you might want to mark it as thread-local (static methods of CultureInfo are thread-safe; instance methods are not). Such a propery might look something like this:

public static string FallbackCultureId { get { return Configuration.AppSettings["FallbackConfigurationId"] ; } }

public static CultureInfo FallbackCultureInfo
{
  get { return fallBackCultureInfo ?? (fallBackCultureInfo=new CultureInfo(FallbackCultureId)) ; }            
}
[ThreadStatic] private static CultureInfo fallBackCultureInfo ;

Degroot

Answer 2

Why not just declare the culture outside of the loop and use the instance reference inside of the loop?

The more you put in there the longer it will take

Norse

Answer 3

In case it is for winforms/wpf app: How to: Set the Culture and UI Culture for Windows Forms Globalization

// C#
// Put the using statements at the beginning of the code module
using System.Threading;
using System.Globalization;
// Put the following code before InitializeComponent()
// Sets the culture to French (France)
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("fr-FR");
// Sets the UI culture to French (France)
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo("fr-FR");

Leontineleontyne

One should note that the scope of this should be limited with a try/catch/finally block so that the original culture is restored should an exception occur. – Degroot