Question

I’m just trying to quickly debug a webservice by printing out the contents of an int and string array. Is there anyway to do this in one method?

I tried

public static string ArrayToString(object[] array)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    foreach (Object item in array)
    {
        sb.Append(item.ToString());
        sb.Append(" ");
    }

    return sb.ToString();
}

But this chokes when I try and send it a primative array (int[]) due to it not being an Object.

Which I find strange as sending an int to the method below works

static void PrintObject(object obj)
{
    Console.WriteLine(obj.ToString());
}

Is there anyway to do this in one method or am I just going to have to man up and create two separate methods?

---

Of course whether I should be using arrays at all is questionable, but the web service is already in place.

See also:

• When to use a Array() over
  Generic.Lists in .NET
• Arrays considered somewhat harmful

Answer 1

public static string ArrayToString<T>(T[] array)
{
   StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    foreach (T item in array)
    {
        sb.Append(item.ToString());
        sb.Append(" ");
    }

    return sb.ToString();
}

Then

int[] x = new int[] { 1, 2, 3 };

string[] y = new string[] { "a", "b", "c" };

Console.WriteLine(ArrayToString(x));
Console.WriteLine(ArrayToString(y));