weird snippet i saw in ironpython - they pre-allocate an cache of 1100 ints-as-objects in an array (in range -100..+10000) and avoid a number of int->object cast by returning the cached version. weird

interesting.cs

/// <summary>
/// Gets a singleton boxed value for the given integer if possible, otherwise boxes the integer.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="value">The value to box.</param>
/// <returns>The boxed value.</returns>
public static object Int32ToObject(Int32 value) {
    // caches improves pystone by ~5-10% on MS .Net 1.1, this is a very integer intense app
    // TODO: investigate if this still helps perf. There's evidence that it's harmful on
    // .NET 3.5 and 4.0
    
    if (value < MAX_CACHE && value >= MIN_CACHE) {
        return cache[value - MIN_CACHE];
    }
    
    return (object)value;
}