Performance Tip Optimizing Iteration
Performance Tip: Optimizing Iteration
Here are two tips to help produce code that makes the most out of Qt internal performance.
Iterator selection
Qt allows you to use both Java-style and STL-style iterators to step through your structures. Your selection of iterator style has no performance impact, but your selection of iterator operator does.
Java style iterator
STL (standard template library) style iterator
When using STL-style iterators with a list containing complex items, execution is faster if you use the ++i operator instead of the i++ operator. The i++ will force your loop to work on a copy of the item i.
Careful with foreach
Benchmarking Qt applications indicates there is always a performance penalty to using a foreach loop as opposed to a for loop with an iterator. However, you can greatly reduce the performance penalty if you use a const iterator in your foreach loop. This can often make the performance penalty negligible, though it is never zero.
Additional reading
- Iterating efficiently [labs.trolltech.com] – Qt Labs blog post
Some of this material originally appeared in Maximizing Performance with Qt [qt.nokia.com] white paper.