Demonstration of performance penalty of Rcpp code being wrapped in tryCatch

rcpp-trycatch.R

library(Rcpp)
library(profvis)

cppFunction('
	double
	call_rnorm(int ignored)
	{
		Function f("rnorm");

		NumericVector x = f(1);
		return x[0];
	}
')

cppFunction('
	double
	call_rnorm_fast(int ignored)
	{
		Function f("rnorm");
		Language call(f, 1) ;

		NumericVector x = call.fast_eval();
		return x[0];
	}
')

loop <- function(f) { for (i in c(1:100000)) { f(0) } }

profvis({loop(call_rnorm)}) # ~1800ms -- stack trace includes tryCatch
profvis({loop(call_rnorm_fast)}) # ~400ms -- no tryCatch