What is the advantage of using Path.Combine over concatenating strings with '+'?

Question

I don't quite see the difference.

What could Path.Combine do better than perfectly working string concatenation?

I guess it's doing something very similar in the background.

Can anyone tell me why it is so often preferred?

Answer 1

Path.Combine uses the Path.PathSeparator and it checks whether the first path already has a separator at the end so it will not duplicate the separators. Additionally, it checks whether the path elements to combine have invalid chars.

Answer 2

Path.Combine does more things than just a string concatenation. If you look at the source code;

• Checks both paths has invalid character or not
• Checks second parameter is root path or not
• Checks last character of first path is director or alt directory or volume separator or not. If not, concatenate both string with directory separator between then