Is there a performance hit when running obfuscated code?

Question

All,

I am proposing the addition of code obfuscation to the standard build process at my organization. One of the questions being asked is whether there is a performance hit to running obfuscated code vs. running unobfuscated code.

What is your experience? Have you seen a reduction in performance at runtime because you obfuscated your Java or C# code?

Thanks,

VI

Answer 1

It depends on how you are obfuscating it. If you use one of the tools that replaces all the names of objets and functions, then there should be no change at all. The compilers don't care what you call anything, whether it's useful to a developer (fetchProjects()) or just (funcA()).

Answer 2

You may wish to read about my over-obfuscation experiments: Impact of Flow Obfuscation on Performance.