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    copied!<p>A lot of people are saying that once you get to the size where speed is actually a concern that <code>HashSet&lt;T&gt;</code> will always beat <code>List&lt;T&gt;</code>, but that depends on what you are doing.</p> <p>Let's say you have a <code>List&lt;T&gt;</code> that will only ever have on average 5 items in it. Over a large number of cycles, if a single item is added or removed each cycle, you may well be better off using a <code>List&lt;T&gt;</code>.</p> <p>I did a test for this on my machine, and, well, it has to be very very small to get an advantage from <code>List&lt;T&gt;</code>. For a list of short strings, the advantage went away after size 5, for objects after size 20.</p> <pre><code>1 item LIST strs time: 617ms 1 item HASHSET strs time: 1332ms 2 item LIST strs time: 781ms 2 item HASHSET strs time: 1354ms 3 item LIST strs time: 950ms 3 item HASHSET strs time: 1405ms 4 item LIST strs time: 1126ms 4 item HASHSET strs time: 1441ms 5 item LIST strs time: 1370ms 5 item HASHSET strs time: 1452ms 6 item LIST strs time: 1481ms 6 item HASHSET strs time: 1418ms 7 item LIST strs time: 1581ms 7 item HASHSET strs time: 1464ms 8 item LIST strs time: 1726ms 8 item HASHSET strs time: 1398ms 9 item LIST strs time: 1901ms 9 item HASHSET strs time: 1433ms 1 item LIST objs time: 614ms 1 item HASHSET objs time: 1993ms 4 item LIST objs time: 837ms 4 item HASHSET objs time: 1914ms 7 item LIST objs time: 1070ms 7 item HASHSET objs time: 1900ms 10 item LIST objs time: 1267ms 10 item HASHSET objs time: 1904ms 13 item LIST objs time: 1494ms 13 item HASHSET objs time: 1893ms 16 item LIST objs time: 1695ms 16 item HASHSET objs time: 1879ms 19 item LIST objs time: 1902ms 19 item HASHSET objs time: 1950ms 22 item LIST objs time: 2136ms 22 item HASHSET objs time: 1893ms 25 item LIST objs time: 2357ms 25 item HASHSET objs time: 1826ms 28 item LIST objs time: 2555ms 28 item HASHSET objs time: 1865ms 31 item LIST objs time: 2755ms 31 item HASHSET objs time: 1963ms 34 item LIST objs time: 3025ms 34 item HASHSET objs time: 1874ms 37 item LIST objs time: 3195ms 37 item HASHSET objs time: 1958ms 40 item LIST objs time: 3401ms 40 item HASHSET objs time: 1855ms 43 item LIST objs time: 3618ms 43 item HASHSET objs time: 1869ms 46 item LIST objs time: 3883ms 46 item HASHSET objs time: 2046ms 49 item LIST objs time: 4218ms 49 item HASHSET objs time: 1873ms </code></pre> <p>Here is that data displayed as a graph:</p> <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/O4ly9.png" alt="enter image description here"></p> <p>Here's the code:</p> <pre><code>static void Main(string[] args) { int times = 10000000; for (int listSize = 1; listSize &lt; 10; listSize++) { List&lt;string&gt; list = new List&lt;string&gt;(); HashSet&lt;string&gt; hashset = new HashSet&lt;string&gt;(); for (int i = 0; i &lt; listSize; i++) { list.Add("string" + i.ToString()); hashset.Add("string" + i.ToString()); } Stopwatch timer = new Stopwatch(); timer.Start(); for (int i = 0; i &lt; times; i++) { list.Remove("string0"); list.Add("string0"); } timer.Stop(); Console.WriteLine(listSize.ToString() + " item LIST strs time: " + timer.ElapsedMilliseconds.ToString() + "ms"); timer = new Stopwatch(); timer.Start(); for (int i = 0; i &lt; times; i++) { hashset.Remove("string0"); hashset.Add("string0"); } timer.Stop(); Console.WriteLine(listSize.ToString() + " item HASHSET strs time: " + timer.ElapsedMilliseconds.ToString() + "ms"); Console.WriteLine(); } for (int listSize = 1; listSize &lt; 50; listSize+=3) { List&lt;object&gt; list = new List&lt;object&gt;(); HashSet&lt;object&gt; hashset = new HashSet&lt;object&gt;(); for (int i = 0; i &lt; listSize; i++) { list.Add(new object()); hashset.Add(new object()); } object objToAddRem = list[0]; Stopwatch timer = new Stopwatch(); timer.Start(); for (int i = 0; i &lt; times; i++) { list.Remove(objToAddRem); list.Add(objToAddRem); } timer.Stop(); Console.WriteLine(listSize.ToString() + " item LIST objs time: " + timer.ElapsedMilliseconds.ToString() + "ms"); timer = new Stopwatch(); timer.Start(); for (int i = 0; i &lt; times; i++) { hashset.Remove(objToAddRem); hashset.Add(objToAddRem); } timer.Stop(); Console.WriteLine(listSize.ToString() + " item HASHSET objs time: " + timer.ElapsedMilliseconds.ToString() + "ms"); Console.WriteLine(); } Console.ReadLine(); } </code></pre>
 

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