how long can a string be?

Question

How long can a System.String be? I know that the Length() method returns a signed Int32 so it probably can't exceed 2^31 (2 billion something) characters. Does anyone know if its length is further restricted to a smaller maximum?

Mike Gold · Answer

Not sure about string but StringBuilder has a max capacity of 2147483647. Here is the constructor: public StringBuilder ( int capacity) { this . m_currentThread = StringBuilder . InternalGetCurrentThread (); this . m_MaxCapacity = 0 ; this . m_StringValue = null ; if ( capacity 0 ) { throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException ( capacity  string . Format ( Environment . GetResourceString ( ArgumentOutOfRange_MustBePositive ) capacity )); } if ( capacity == 0 ) { capacity = 0x10 ; } this . m_StringValue = string . GetStringForStringBuilder ( string . Empty  capacity ); this . m_MaxCapacity = 0x7fffffff ; }