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Strings

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string is the C# alias for the sealed reference type System.String. Its contents are immutable. Assignment copies a reference, while an operation that changes text produces a different string. That boundary explains most string behavior, including when concatenation is clear and when incremental construction starts wasting allocations.

Core Properties

  • string is a sealed reference type.
  • Strings are immutable in safe managed code.
  • == and Equals compare string content, not object identity.
var a = "hello";
var b = a;
b = b + "!";
 
Console.WriteLine(a); // hello
Console.WriteLine(b); // hello!

b = b + "!" creates a new string object. a remains unchanged.

String Interning

String literals can share an interned instance, and identical literals typically do. Object identity is not contractual. Compilation can request NoStringInterning, and runtime behavior may still vary:

var s1 = "dotnet";
var s2 = "dotnet";
 
Console.WriteLine(object.ReferenceEquals(s1, s2)); // Typically True; identity is not contractual

Runtime interning is available through string.Intern(s), and string.IsInterned(s) checks whether an equivalent value is already present. Interned entries are generally retained until the runtime terminates. Feeding the pool high-cardinality dynamic text trades ordinary garbage collection for long-lived retention, usually a bad deal. Compile-time constant concatenations ("a" + "b") are folded by the compiler. Runtime-built strings are not automatically interned.

StringBuilder

StringBuilder fits text assembled through repeated appends, especially in a loop or another hot path.

var sb = new StringBuilder(capacity: 256);
for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++)
{
    sb.Append("item-").Append(i).AppendLine();
}
 
var result = sb.ToString();

The usual decision is small:

  • Interpolation or concatenation fits small, one-off composition.
  • StringBuilder fits repeated incremental construction after the allocation cost matters.

Encoding and Unicode

A .NET string stores UTF-16 code units. A char is one 16-bit code unit, not necessarily a complete Unicode scalar value. Characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane use a surrogate pair, so "👍".Length == 2 and s[0] returns only half of that pair.

Rune and EnumerateRunes() operate on Unicode scalar values. User-perceived characters are a different boundary again: one grapheme may contain a base character plus combining marks, so text-element APIs such as StringInfo are needed. string.Normalize() can put canonically equivalent sequences into the same normalization form before comparison.

Low-Allocation String Handling

Hot paths sometimes need construction without intermediate strings:

  • ReadOnlySpan<char> slices and parses existing text without allocating another string. Many BCL parse APIs accept spans directly.
  • string.Create(length, state, callback) fills a new string of known length directly, avoiding a separate builder buffer.
  • Interpolated string handlers (C# 10) let an API consume interpolation pieces without first creating the final string. The benefit applies only when the receiving overload accepts a handler, as StringBuilder.Append does.
  • ArrayPool<char> rents scratch buffers for transformations. Pooling is worthwhile only when buffer allocations show up in measurement. Every rental adds ownership and clearing rules.

Pitfalls

  • Repeated += in a loop creates intermediate strings. In a measured hot path, StringBuilder or a pre-sized buffer cuts that churn.
  • ReferenceEquals checks identity, and interning makes identity depend on how the string was created. Semantic comparison should use APIs that accept StringComparison, including string.Equals, StartsWith, EndsWith, and IndexOf.
  • Culture-implicit comparison can change with the current culture. Identifiers and protocol values normally need Ordinal or OrdinalIgnoreCase. Natural-language UI text may need a culture-aware comparison instead.

Tradeoffs

  • Interpolation or concatenation vs StringBuilder: interpolation is clearer for one-off formatting. A builder pays off when text grows through repeated appends.
  • Ordinal vs culture-aware comparison: ordinal rules are stable for technical keys. Culture-aware comparison belongs to natural-language text where locale behavior is intentional.
  • Interning vs ordinary allocation: literals can share interned instances, but code must not depend on their identity. Forcing dynamic values into the pool can save duplicates at the price of process-long retention, so it needs a bounded value set and evidence.

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