Few extension methods of String concatenation in C#






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Few extension methods of String concatenation in C#
String concatenation
About
string
concatenation, there are already many articles that have been posted in the web. There are many arguments about string
concatenation, for example some people say we should not use +
, some says use string.join
or StringBuilder
. I think all are right because usage of different techniques depend on the situation and expected performance really. I reflect the string.concat
method using .NET reflector then found return (arg0.ToString() + arg1.ToString());
code in where they use +
so then what's wrong with the +
? Of course, there are performance issues with +
.
So I have created few extensions of string
to do the concatenation operation which I include below:
public static class StringExtensions
{
public static string JoinWithSeparator(this string baseItem, string firstItem, string separator = default(string))
{
return string.Join(separator: separator, value: new[] { baseItem, firstItem });
}
public static string JoinWithSeparator(this string baseItem, string firstItem, string secondItem, string separator = default(string))
{
return string.Join(separator: separator, value: new[] { baseItem, firstItem, secondItem });
}
public static string JoinWithSeparator(this string baseItem, string[] items, string separator = default(string))
{
return string.Join(separator, new[] { baseItem, string.Join(separator: separator, value: items) });
}
public static string JoinWith(this string baseItem, string[] items, string separator = default(string))
{
var builder = new StringBuilder();
Array.ForEach(items,
item =>
{
builder.Append(value: item).Append(separator);
});
return ReferenceEquals(separator, default(string)) ? builder.ToString() : builder.ToString().TrimEnd(separator.ToCharArray());
}
public static string JoinWithDifferentTypes<T1, T2, T3>(this string baseItem, Tuple<T1, T2, T3> tupleOfJoinableItems)
where T1 : struct
where T2 : struct
where T3 : class
{
var builder = new StringBuilder();
builder.Append(baseItem).Append(tupleOfJoinableItems.Item1).Append(tupleOfJoinableItems.Item2);
return ReferenceEquals(tupleOfJoinableItems.Item3, null) ? builder.ToString() : builder.Append(tupleOfJoinableItems.Item3.ToString()).ToString();
}
}
In the above code, I used string.Join
and StringBuilder
to join with given strings
and also I wrote extension named JoinWithDifferentTypes
by which I tried to use multiple types to join into one string
item. In the JoinWithDifferentTypes
method, I could also use:
return string.Format("{0}{1}{2}{3}", baseItem, tupleOfJoinableItems.Item1, tupleOfJoinableItems.Item2, tupleOfJoinableItems.Item3);to describe the usage of the above extension methods I used following code blocks:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string[] items = new string[] { "One-", "Two-", "Three" };
string baseItem = "Zero";
Console.WriteLine("Results :\n {0}\n {1}\n {2}\n {3}\n {4}\n {5}\n {6}\n {7}",
new object[]
{
baseItem.JoinWithSeparator("One", Definitions.Separator),
baseItem.JoinWithSeparator("One", "Two", Definitions.Separator),
baseItem.JoinWithSeparator(new[] { "One", "Two" }, Definitions.Separator),
baseItem.JoinWith(Definitions.Topics.Split(new[] { ',' }), Definitions.Separator),
baseItem.JoinWith(Definitions.Topics.Split(new[] { ',' })),
baseItem.JoinWithDifferentTypes<int, char, object>(new Tuple<int, char, object>(1, 'C', null)),
baseItem.JoinWithDifferentTypes<int, char, Person>(new Tuple<int, char, Person>(1, 'C', new Person() { Name = "Name", Address = "Address" }))
});
Console.ReadKey();
}
JoinWithSeparator
There are three overloaded versions and all of those have a common behavior which is the separator and it is optional
. Besides that, if I want to join with a single item, I could use JoinWithSeparator
extension for example, "JoinWith".JoinWithSeparator("Me")
or if want to add two items with separator, then "JoinWith".JoinWithSeparator("A","B",Definitions.Separator)
. This extension is preferable for the circumstances where we need to add One or Two items with baseItem
.
JoinWith
The JoinWith
extension will take an array
of string
tokens and will add those with the baseitem. If we need to add many items, then we should use this extension.
JoinWithDifferentTypes
If we want to add different types of items into the baseItem (which is string
in here), then we can use this one.
and some other related classes
I used:
public class Person
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Address { get; set; }
public override string ToString()
{
return Name.JoinWith(Address);
}
}
public class Definitions
{
public const string
Separator = "-",
Topics = "Programming, Music, Documentary";
}