Question

I have a StringBuilder object where I am adding some strings like follows:

I want to know which one is better approach here, first one is this:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.Append("Hello" + "How" + "are" + "you");

and the second one is:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.Append("Hello").Append("How").Append("are").Append("you");

Answer 1

The first will be more efficient. The compiler will convert it to the following single call:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.Append("HelloHowareyou");

Measuring the performance

The best way to know which is faster is to measure it. I’ll get straight to the point: here are the results (smaller times means faster):

sb.Append("Hello" + "How" + "are" + "you")                  : 11.428s
sb.Append("Hello").Append("How").Append("are").Append("you"): 15.314s
sb.Append(a + b + c + d)                                    : 21.970s
sb.Append(a).Append(b).Append(c).Append(d)                  : 15.529s

The number given is the number of seconds to perform the operation 100 million times in a tight loop.

Conclusions

• The fastest is using string literals and +.
• But if you have variables, using Append is faster than +. The first version is slower because of an extra call to String.Concat.

---

In case you want to test this yourself, here’s the program I used to get the above timings:

using System;
using System.Text;

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        DateTime start, end;
        int numberOfIterations = 100000000;
        start = DateTime.UtcNow;
        for (int i = 0; i < numberOfIterations; ++i)
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            sb.Append("Hello" + "How" + "are" + "you");
        }
        end = DateTime.UtcNow;
        DisplayResult("sb.Append(\"Hello\" + \"How\" + \"are\" + \"you\")", start, end);

        start = DateTime.UtcNow;
        for (int i = 0; i < numberOfIterations; ++i)
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            sb.Append("Hello").Append("How").Append("are").Append("you");
        }
        end = DateTime.UtcNow;
        DisplayResult("sb.Append(\"Hello\").Append(\"How\").Append(\"are\").Append(\"you\")", start, end);

        string a = "Hello";
        string b = "How";
        string c = "are";
        string d = "you";

        start = DateTime.UtcNow;
        for (int i = 0; i < numberOfIterations; ++i)
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            sb.Append(a + b + c + d);
        }
        end = DateTime.UtcNow;
        DisplayResult("sb.Append(a + b + c + d)", start, end);

        start = DateTime.UtcNow;
        for (int i = 0; i < numberOfIterations; ++i)
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            sb.Append(a).Append(b).Append(c).Append(d);
        }
        end = DateTime.UtcNow;
        DisplayResult("sb.Append(a).Append(b).Append(c).Append(d)", start, end);

        Console.ReadLine();
    }

    private static void DisplayResult(string name, DateTime start, DateTime end)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("{0,-60}: {1,6:0.000}s", name, (end - start).TotalSeconds);
    }
}