Question

Is there any drawback for omitting .ToString() while converting numeric values to string ?

int i = 1234;
string s;
// Instead of
s = "i is " + i.ToString();
// Writing
s = "i is " + i;

Answer 1

It doesn’t make a difference in this case.

"Count: " + i

compiles down to

String.Concat("Count: ",i)

String.Concat has multiple overloads, and I believe that the Concat(Object, Object) overload is chosen (since the only common ancestor of string and int is object).

The internal implementation is this:

 return (arg0.ToString() + arg1.ToString());

If you call

"Count: " + i.ToString()

then it chooses the Concat(String, String) overload since both are strings.

So for all practical matters, it’s essentially doing the same anyway – it’s implicitly calling i.ToString().

I usually omit .ToString in cases like the above because it just adds noise.