Parameter Efficiency

[GrahamS 0]

I am concerned about the efficiency of passing large data structures as parameters to functions. Am I right in assuming that passing a parameter by reference (i.e. using the ByRef keyword) will not perform a copy? If the parameter is passed without the ByRef keyword is a copy performed?

Thanks in anticipation

[Valik 481]

ByRef uses the original variable, no copy is performed. Otherwise, a local (to the function) copy is created for the scope of the function and is destroyed when the function exits.

[GrahamS 0]

Thanks for the quick reply!

[Jon 1,248]

Unless you have a good reason not to, always pass arrays by reference - the performance difference is massive (hence why not many languages allow you to pass arrays any other way)

[GrahamS 0]

That's why I wanted confirmation about my assumption.

Would it not be a good idea to add this to the help file?

BTW I once was called in to troubleshoot a hard real time project, written in C, that had major performance problems. They were passing 1400 byte messages by value, up to 50 times per message! The fix gained an order of magnitude improvement.