The current culture is the CultureInfo object associated with the current thread.

The CurrentCultureIgnoreCase property actually returns an instance of an anonymous class derived from the StringComparer class.

Each call to the CurrentCultureIgnoreCase property get accessor returns a new StringComparer object, as the following code shows.

Private Sub CompareCurrentCultureInsensitiveStringComparers()
   Dim stringComparer1, stringComparer2 As StringComparer
   stringComparer1 = StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase
   stringComparer2 = StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase
   ' Displays False
   Console.WriteLine(StringComparer.ReferenceEquals(stringComparer1, _
                                                    stringComparer2))
End Sub

private void CompareCurrentCultureInsensitiveStringComparer()
{
   StringComparer stringComparer1, stringComparer2;
   stringComparer1 = StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase;
   stringComparer2 = StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase;
   // Displays false
   Console.WriteLine(StringComparer.ReferenceEquals(stringComparer1, 
                                                    stringComparer2));
}

To improve performance, you can store the StringComparer object in a local variable rather than retrieve the value of the CurrentCultureIgnoreCase property multiple times.

Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Starter Edition, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2000 SP4, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 98, Windows CE, Windows Mobile for Smartphone, Windows Mobile for Pocket PC, Xbox 360, Zune

.NET Framework

.NET Compact Framework

XNA Framework

Reference