Question

I have a string that may have whitespace characters around it and I want to check to see whether it is essentially empty.

There are quite a few ways to do this:

1  if (myString.Trim().Length == 0)
2  if (myString.Trim() == "")
3  if (myString.Trim().Equals(""))
4  if (myString.Trim() == String.Empty)
5  if (myString.Trim().Equals(String.Empty))

I’m aware that this would usually be a clear case of premature optimization, but I’m curious and there’s a chance that this will be done enough to have a performance impact.

So which of these is the most efficient method?

Are there any better methods I haven’t thought of?

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Edit: Notes for visitors to this question:

1. There have been some amazingly detailed investigations into this question – particularly from Andy and Jon Skeet.

2. If you’ve stumbled across the question while searching for something, it’s well worth your while reading at least Andy’s and Jon’s posts in their entirety.

It seems that there are a few very efficient methods and the most efficient depends on the contents of the strings I need to deal with.

If I can’t predict the strings (which I can’t in my case), Jon’s IsEmptyOrWhiteSpace methods seem to be faster generally.

Thanks all for your input. I’m going to select Andy’s answer as the “correct” one simply because he deserves the reputation boost for the effort he put in and Jon has like eleventy-billion reputation already.

Answer 1

Edit: New tests:

Test orders:
x. Test name
Ticks: xxxxx //Empty String
Ticks: xxxxx //two space
Ticks: xxxxx //single letter
Ticks: xxxxx //single letter with space
Ticks: xxxxx //long string
Ticks: xxxxx //long string  with space

1. if (myString.Trim().Length == 0)
ticks: 4121800
ticks: 7523992
ticks: 17655496
ticks: 29312608
ticks: 17302880
ticks: 38160224

2.  if (myString.Trim() == "")
ticks: 4862312
ticks: 8436560
ticks: 21833776
ticks: 32822200
ticks: 21655224
ticks: 42358016


3.  if (myString.Trim().Equals(""))
ticks: 5358744
ticks: 9336728
ticks: 18807512
ticks: 30340392
ticks: 18598608
ticks: 39978008


4.  if (myString.Trim() == String.Empty)
ticks: 4848368
ticks: 8306312
ticks: 21552736
ticks: 32081168
ticks: 21486048
ticks: 41667608


5.  if (myString.Trim().Equals(String.Empty))
ticks: 5372720
ticks: 9263696
ticks: 18677728
ticks: 29634320
ticks: 18551904
ticks: 40183768


6.  if (IsEmptyOrWhitespace(myString))  //See John Skeet's Post for algorithm
ticks: 6597776
ticks: 9988304
ticks: 7855664
ticks: 7826296
ticks: 7885200
ticks: 7872776

7. is (string.IsNullOrEmpty(myString.Trim())  //Cloud's suggestion
ticks: 4302232
ticks: 10200344
ticks: 18425416
ticks: 29490544
ticks: 17800136
ticks: 38161368

And the code used:

public void Main()
{

    string res = string.Empty;

    for (int j = 0; j <= 5; j++) {

        string myString = "";

        switch (j) {

            case 0:
                myString = "";
                break;
            case 1:
                myString = "  ";
                break;
            case 2:
                myString = "x";
                break;
            case 3:
                myString = "x ";
                break;
            case 4:
                myString = "this is a long string for testing triming empty things.";
                break;
            case 5:
                myString = "this is a long string for testing triming empty things. ";

                break;
        }

        bool result = false;
        Stopwatch sw = new Stopwatch();

        sw.Start();
        for (int i = 0; i <= 100000; i++) {


            result = myString.Trim().Length == 0;
        }
        sw.Stop();


        res += "ticks: " + sw.ElapsedTicks + Environment.NewLine;
    }


    Console.ReadKey();  //break point here to get the results
}