What is the difference between MyEnum.Item.ToString() and nameof(MyEnum.Item)?

Question

MyEnum.Item.ToString();
nameof(MyEnum.Item);

Which style is preferred? Is there any practical difference between the two?

Answer 1

The first is a run-time call that will realise at runtime it needs to return the string "Item", and do so.

The second is another way to write "Item" straight into the code.

The second would be slightly faster, but prior to C#6 would not have been available. To put "Item" in the code manually would have therefore been an optimisation that risked an error, while nameof() would catch such an error at compile-time.

As such while the approach of using the name directly might once have been considered taking a risk, that risk is gone, and it has a slight edge.

ToString() though remains the only way to output the string based on a variable or expression of the MyEnum type.