Question

In C#, I want to initialize a string value with an empty string.

How should I do this? What is the right way, and why?

string willi = string.Empty; 

or

string willi = String.Empty; 

or

string willi = ''; 

or what?

Answer 1

Use whatever you and your team find the most readable.

Other answers have suggested that a new string is created every time you use ''. This is not true – due to string interning, it will be created either once per assembly or once per AppDomain (or possibly once for the whole process – not sure on that front). This difference is negligible – massively, massively insignificant.

Which you find more readable is a different matter, however. It’s subjective and will vary from person to person – so I suggest you find out what most people on your team like, and all go with that for consistency. Personally I find '' easier to read.

The argument that '' and ' ' are easily mistaken for each other doesn’t really wash with me. Unless you’re using a proportional font (and I haven’t worked with any developers who do) it’s pretty easy to tell the difference.