What is the maximum possible length of a .NET string?

Question

What is the longest string that can be created in .NET? The docs for the String class are silent on this question as far as I can see, so an authoritative answe

Answer 1

Based on my highly scientific and accurate experiment, it tops out on my machine well before 1,000,000,000 characters. (I'm still running the code below to get a better pinpoint).

UPDATE: After a few hours, I've given up. Final results: Can go a lot bigger than 100,000,000 characters, instantly given System.OutOfMemoryException at 1,000,000,000 characters.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class MyClass
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        int i = 100000000;
        try
        {
            for (i = i; i <= int.MaxValue; i += 5000)
            {
                string value = new string('x', i);
                //WL(i);
            }
        }
        catch (Exception exc)
        {
            WL(i);
            WL(exc);
        }
        WL(i);
        RL();
    }

    #region Helper methods

    private static void WL(object text, params object[] args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(text.ToString(), args);   
    }

    private static void RL()
    {
        Console.ReadLine(); 
    }

    private static void Break() 
    {
        System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
    }

    #endregion
}