String from Boolean

Question

How do I make a string such as "You did it!" appear from a boolean pass/fail instead of just "True" or "False"? I'm only ever able to find the ToString method, but all that does is change "True" to "true". I want to know how to make the string output whatever I want.

Answer 1

A bool is a type, the same way a string is a type. You'll never be able to get a bool type to show "You did it!", because its a bool - it can only be true or false.

What you want is to create a string based on the result of boolean. Sounds like you want an if statement:

string myString;
if(myBool) // if true
{
    myString = "You did it!";
}
else
{
    myString = "You didn't do it";
}

like @juharr showed, there are ways to do this in less lines of code, but this is the logic that needs to happen.

As a side note, you see the ToString method on bool because every type inheriting from System.Object inherits the ToString method, providing you with a string representation of that object. It's not applicable for what you're wanting to accomplish here.

Answer 2

If you are using C# 3.0 or higher, you can also put this in an extension method for bool like this:

public static string ToDidItOrNotString(this bool b)
{
    return b ? "You did it!" : "You did not do it.";
}

Then you can just call it like this:

string s = boolVal.ToDidItOrNotString();