Strings in C# - Part 4


Introduction

 

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

 

MSDN Reference

 

Well, you need to learn Part 1 of this series of articles to understand this better. In the previous articles we tried to change the content of strings using various methods like Replace(), ToUpper() etc. But if you recall, the value of a string cannot be modified once it is established. The methods like Replace() may seem to change the content of the string but actually, those methods just return a copy of the string and the original string remains the same.

 

Look at example:

 

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

 

namespace ConsoleApplication1

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            string str1 = "Hello Abhimanyu";

            Console.WriteLine(str1);

 

            string str2 = str1.ToUpper();

            Console.WriteLine(str2);

 

            //Let's see original string variable

            Console.WriteLine(str1);

 

            Console.ReadKey();

        }

    }

}

 

/*

Output:-

Hello Abhimanyu

HELLO ABHIMANYU

Hello Abhimanyu

*/

 

Thus, whenever we want to modify a string, we should have a new string to store the modified version. That is, every time we have to work on a copy of the string but not the original. To avoid this inefficiency, C# provides a class called StringBuilder contained in the namespace System.Text. Any modification on an instance of StringBuilder will affect the underlying buffer itself.

 

Let's have an example:

 

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text; //for StringBuilder

 

namespace ConsoleApplication1

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            StringBuilder str1 = new StringBuilder("Hello Abhimanyu");

            Console.WriteLine(str1);

            str1.Append(", how are you?");

            Console.WriteLine(str1);

 

            Console.ReadKey();

        }

    }

}

 

/*

Output:-

Hello Abhimanyu

Hello Abhimanyu, how are you?

*/

 

To modify the string content, we have the following methods:

 

(i) Append: Appends information to the end of the current StringBuilder.

(ii) AppendFormat: Replaces a format specifier passed in a string with formatted text. Read and modify method.

(iii) Insert: Inserts a string or object into the specified index of the current StringBuilder.

(iv) Remove: Removes a specified number of characters from the current StringBuilder.

(v) Replace: Replaces a specified character at a specified index.

 

Let's have an example:

 

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text; //for StringBuilder

 

namespace ConsoleApplication1

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            //Using StringBuilder.Append()

            StringBuilder str1 = new StringBuilder("Hello Abhimanyu");

            Console.WriteLine(str1);  //output: Hello Abhimanyu

            str1.Append(", how are you?");

            Console.WriteLine(str1);  //output: Hello Abhimanyu, how are you?

 

            //Using StringBuilder.AppendFormat()

            string sen1 = "Hello";

            string sen2 = "Abhimanyu";

            string sen3 = ", how are you?";

            StringBuilder str2 = new StringBuilder();

            str2.AppendFormat("{0}", sen1); //output: Hello

            Console.WriteLine(str2);

            str2.AppendFormat(" {0}", sen2);  //output: Hello Abhimanyu

            Console.WriteLine(str2);

            str2.AppendFormat(" {0}", sen3);  //output: Hello Abhimanyu, how are you

            Console.WriteLine(str2);

 

            //Using StringBuilder.Insert()

            StringBuilder str3 = new StringBuilder("Hello ");

            str3.Insert(6, "Abhimanyu");

            Console.WriteLine(str3);  //output: Hello Abhimanyu

 

            //Using StringBuilder.Remove()

            StringBuilder str4 = new StringBuilder("Hello .");

            Console.WriteLine(str4);  //output: Hello  .

            str4.Remove(6, 1);

            Console.WriteLine(str4);  //output: Hello

 

            //Using StringBuilder.Replace()

            StringBuilder str5 = new StringBuilder("Hello Abhi");

            Console.WriteLine(str5); // output: Hello Abhi

            str5.Replace("Abhi", "Abhimanyu");

            Console.WriteLine(str5); // output: Hello Abhimanyu

 

            Console.ReadKey();

        }

    }

}

 

Thank you for reading. Keep Commenting.

 

HAVE A HAPPY CODING!!

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