How Can I Determine the Memory Consumption of Objects in C#?

Estimating Memory Usage of C# Objects

Understanding the memory footprint of objects in C# is crucial for performance tuning and effective memory management. This is especially important when working with large collections such as Hashtable, SortedList, or List<string>.

A practical method for approximating memory consumption involves serialization. While not perfectly precise, it provides a useful estimate in most cases.

Here's how you can do it:

<code class="language-csharp">long size = 0;
object o = new object();
using (Stream s = new MemoryStream())
{
    BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
    formatter.Serialize(s, o);
    size = s.Length;
}</code>

This code snippet serializes an object (o) to a MemoryStream using BinaryFormatter. The s.Length property then gives an approximation of the object's memory size.

Keep in mind that this is an estimate. Factors like memory fragmentation and the runtime environment can affect accuracy. However, it offers a reliable indication of memory usage for general purposes.

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