Due to the
memory optimization in the StringBuilder class, the concatenation of strings
can be 10 times faster or more than using the “+” operator of strings.
One of the
reasons the + operator for strings is not the fastest way to perform this
operation is because it does not actually conctatenetes two strings at the same
time but allocates a new memory space for the previous stirng “Plus” the new
one. That is say:
Text =
“Hello”
This means
the memory allocated an array of chars with the following content:
Memory
Address X à{‘H’, ‘e’, ‘l’, ‘l’, ‘o’, ‘\0’}
However,
when we perform the following operation:
Text += “,
world.”
This time,
the memory will look like follows:
Memory Address
X à{‘H’, ‘e’, ‘l’, ‘l’, ‘o’, ‘\0’}
Memory Address
Y à{‘H’, ‘e’, ‘l’, ‘l’, ‘o’, ‘,’, ‘ ’,
‘w’, ‘o’, ‘r’, ‘l’, ‘d’, ‘\0’}
The
original string is kept in its orginal memory position while the concat
operation allocated a new memory space to put the new resulting string.
On the
other hand, the StringBuilder class has an optimized use of memory allocation. As
a result, it improves the Append algorithm by extenteding the allocated memory.
StringBuilder
sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.Append(“Hello”);
Memory
Address X à{‘H’, ‘e’, ‘l’, ‘l’, ‘o’, ‘\0’}
sb.Append(“Hello,
world”);
Memory Address
X à{‘H’, ‘e’, ‘l’, ‘l’, ‘o’, ‘,’, ‘ ’,
‘w’, ‘o’, ‘r’, ‘l’, ‘d’, ‘\0’}
As a result, due to the better memory management of the StringBuilder class when concatenating strings, this is the best way to address any performance issue when concatenating.
