Why use String.Concat() in C#?

Question

I been wondering this for a while. Why use String.Concat() instead of using the + operator. I understand the String.Format since it a voids using the + operator and make your code looker nicer.

Like for example:

string one = "bob";
string two = "jim";

string three = one + two;
string three = String.Concat(one, two);

Answer 1

As long as the two operands are strings, there is no difference at all between using the + operator and the String.Concat method. The code using the + operator actually compiles into a String.Concat call.

Use the one that best represents your intention with the code.

Answer 2

I use + when I know how many strings are going to be concatenated - but what if you just have an array? In that case you wouldn't know how many times to apply +, so you'd have to call a method (or loop yourself, which is horrible).

I can't remember calling string.Concat very often though - it's a definite rarity.

As guffa says, + compiles down into calls to string.Concat anyway - it's worth being aware that string doesn't actually have a + operator, which can be a cause of confusion if you ever try to use it in reflection!

One benefit of + though is that if all the arguments are constant expressions, the compiler will perform the concatenation for you, so you don't need to do it at execution time. That sort of tiny performance benefit isn't going to be significant in most code, but it's always nice when the code I find most readable also has a performance advantage :)

Answer 3

I myself have been having this same question and this question triggered me to investigate into it a bit,

I created the following class

public class Class1
{
    string str = "One" + "Team";
    string str2 = string.Concat("One", "Team");
}

And below is corresponding IL code for that.

.method public hidebysig specialname rtspecialname 
        instance void .ctor() cil managed
{ 
    // Code size        40 (0x28)   
    .maxstack  8   
    IL_0000:  ldarg.0   
    IL_0001:  ldstr     "OneTeam"   
    IL_0006:  stfld     string StringConcat.Class1::str  
    IL_000b:  ldarg.0   
    IL_000c:  ldstr     "One"   
    IL_0011:  ldstr     "Team"  
    IL_0016:  call      string [mscorlib]System.String::Concat(string, string)   
    IL_001b:  stfld     string StringConcat.Class1::str2   
    IL_0020:  ldarg.0   
    IL_0021:  call      instance void [mscorlib]System.Object::.ctor()  
    IL_0026:  nop   
    IL_0027:  ret 
    // end of method Class1::.ctor
} 

For me it definitely looks like string.Concat is having more steps than overloaded + operator. But I know for sure inside the System.String class there will be similar set of operations happening for overloaded + operator as well. Thoughts?

Answer 4

Because you can use the version that takes two objects ;)