I ran into a similarish issue in C++ (MSVC++) where a small change that improved an error message led to a 10% slowdown. The function was something like: in

I ran into a similarish issue in C++ (MSVC++) where a small change that improved an error message led to a 10% slowdown. The function was something like: int ReturnAnswerIfCharIsValid(char* c) { if(c == nullptr) throw std::exception("ERROR!"); return 42; } The exception line was changed to something like: throw std::exception("Char is not valid, please fix it!"); // String is now longer The performance of this hot-path function went down the drain. I fixed it by replacing the exception call with yet another function call: if(c == nullptr) ThrowException(); Other fixes might have included something like __forceinline in the function signature.