Asc, AscW, and more (speed comparison)

[VictorB212]

I was curious about the relative speeds of character to integer conversions, so I did some benchmarking. I got these results:

Char.GetNumericValue("x"c) -- 4391 ms
Asc("x"c) -- 1797 ms
AscW("x"c) -- 734 ms
System.Convert.ToInt32("x"c) -- 532 ms
System.Convert.ToInt16("x"c) -- 671 ms
System.Convert.ToByte("x"c) -- 688 ms
MyAsc("x"c) -- 2281 ms

In order to see this yourself, insert this into a function:

Dim iTick As Integer
        Dim iIterations As Integer = 100000000
        Dim i As Integer
 
 
        iTick = Environment.TickCount
        For i = 0 To iIterations
            Char.GetNumericValue("x"c)
        Next
        Console.WriteLine("Char.GetNumericValue(""x""c) -- {0} ms", Environment.TickCount - iTick)
 
        iTick = Environment.TickCount
        For i = 0 To iIterations
            Asc("x"c)
        Next
        Console.WriteLine("Asc(""x""c) -- {0} ms", Environment.TickCount - iTick)
 
        iTick = Environment.TickCount
        For i = 0 To iIterations
            AscW("x"c)
        Next
        Console.WriteLine("AscW(""x""c) -- {0} ms", Environment.TickCount - iTick)
 
        iTick = Environment.TickCount
        For i = 0 To iIterations
            System.Convert.ToInt32("x"c)
        Next
        Console.WriteLine("System.Convert.ToInt32(""x""c) -- {0} ms", Environment.TickCount - iTick)
 
        iTick = Environment.TickCount
        For i = 0 To iIterations
            System.Convert.ToInt16("x"c)
        Next
        Console.WriteLine("System.Convert.ToInt16(""x""c) -- {0} ms", Environment.TickCount - iTick)
 
        iTick = Environment.TickCount
        For i = 0 To iIterations
            System.Convert.ToByte("x"c)
        Next
        Console.WriteLine("System.Convert.ToByte(""x""c) -- {0} ms", Environment.TickCount - iTick)
 
        iTick = Environment.TickCount
        For i = 0 To iIterations
            MyAsc("x"c)
        Next
        Console.WriteLine("MyAsc(""x""c) -- {0} ms", Environment.TickCount - iTick)

MyAsc is included below simply to demonstrate that encapsulating the fastest method above in a function is not a good solution:

Private Function MyAsc(ByVal c As Char) As Integer
        Return System.Convert.ToInt32(c)
    End Function