String Concatenation (C# and Java Cross Reference Guide)

C# performs implicit casting of numbers to strings. To concatenate two strings, a string to an integer, or a string to a floating point number, use the + operator. For example, to convert a floating point number to a string just concatenate an empty string to the number as in "" + 3.2.

Alternatively, you can use the System.Text.StringBuilder class which frequently but not always provides faster code.

String FirstName;

String LastName;

Int16 Age;

FirstName = "Mike";

LastName = "Prestwood";

Age = 43;

Console.WriteLine(FirstName + " " + LastName + " is " + Age + ".");

//Implicit casting of numbers.

//

//This fails:

//MessageBox.Show(3.3);

//

//This works:

MessageBox.Show("" + 3.3); 

In Java, you use either the String concatenation + operator or StringBulder class methods such as append. Since Java compilers frequently create intermediate objects when the + operator is used and don't when StringBuilder.append is used, the append method is faster than the + operator.

In general, use the convenience of a + operator when speed is not an issue. For example, when concatenating a small number of items and when code isn't executed very frequently. A decent rule of thumb is to use the + operator for general purpose programming and then optimize the + operator with StringBuilder.append as needed.

System.out.println("Hello" + " " + "Mike.");

StringBuilder myMsg = new StringBuilder();
 

myMsg.append("Hello ");

myMsg.append("Mike.");

 
System.out.println(myMsg);