Question

It it somehow possible to draw a string using the GDI onto an image using a StringBuilder instead of a string? There is no Graphics.DrawString() overload that accepts a StringBuilder. But a regular string can in some cases dramatically increase the GC time (in my case 52% according to the CLR Profiler).

Note: I DON’T want to use the XNA Framework which supports StringBuilders as of 4.0.

Answer 1

I don’t believe it is possible without using some alternative graphics library.

Since .NET 4.0, StringBuilder does not use a String class internally (even with reflection you cannot extract a String object).

You are right that calling myStringBuilder.ToString() will incur a performance hit; it is essentially making a copy of your string each time it is called. But in code that calls Graphics.DrawString(), I just don’t see that being a bottleneck.