StringBuilder Class

This class represents a string-like object whose value is a mutable sequence of characters. The value is said to be mutable because it can be modified once it has been created by appending, removing, replacing, or inserting characters. For comparison, see the String class.

Most of the methods that modify an instance of this class return a reference to that same instance. Since a reference to the instance is returned, you can call a method or property on the reference. This can be convenient if you want to write a single statement that chains successive operations one after another.

The capacity of a StringBuilder is the maximum number of characters the instance can store at any given time, and is greater than or equal to the length of the string representation of the value of the instance. The capacity can be increased or decreased with the Capacity property or EnsureCapacity method, but it cannot be less than the value of the Length property.

Implementation-specific default values are used if no capacity or maximum capacity is specified when an instance of StringBuilder is initialized.

Performance Considerations

The default capacity for this implementation is 16, and the default maximum capacity is Int32.MaxValue.

A StringBuilder can allocate more memory as needed to store characters when the value of an instance is enlarged, and the capacity is adjusted accordingly. The amount of memory allocated is implementation-specific, and ArgumentOutOfRangeException is thrown if the amount of memory required is greater than the maximum capacity.

For example, the Append, AppendFormat, EnsureCapacity, Insert, and Replace methods can enlarge the value of an instance.

The individual characters in the value of a StringBuilder can be accessed with the Chars property. Index positions start from zero.

Windows Mobile for Pocket PC, Windows Mobile for Smartphone, Windows CE Platform Note: Continuously appending strings to StringBuilder objects can result in virtual address space fragmentation. Due to the limited virtual address space for each process in Windows CE, this issue can appear after appending strings of approximately 3 MB. To workaround this issue, you can set the MaxCapacity property. Alternatively, open a MemoryStream and write strings to the memory stream instead of using the StringBuilder class.

The following example shows how to call many of the methods defined by the StringBuilder class.

using System;
using System.Text;

public sealed class App 
{
    static void Main() 
    {
        // Create a StringBuilder that expects to hold 50 characters.
        // Initialize the StringBuilder with "ABC".
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("ABC", 50);

        // Append three characters (D, E, and F) to the end of the StringBuilder.
        sb.Append(new char[] { 'D', 'E', 'F' });

        // Append a format string to the end of the StringBuilder.
        sb.AppendFormat("GHI{0}{1}", 'J', 'k');

        // Display the number of characters in the StringBuilder and its string.
        Console.WriteLine("{0} chars: {1}", sb.Length, sb.ToString());

        // Insert a string at the beginning of the StringBuilder.
        sb.Insert(0, "Alphabet: ");

        // Replace all lowercase k's with uppercase K's.
        sb.Replace('k', 'K');

        // Display the number of characters in the StringBuilder and its string.
        Console.WriteLine("{0} chars: {1}", sb.Length, sb.ToString());
    }
}

// This code produces the following output.
//
// 11 chars: ABCDEFGHIJk
// 21 chars: Alphabet: ABCDEFGHIJK

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