String output: format or concat in C#?

Question

Let\'s say that you want to output or concat strings. Which of the following styles do you prefer?

• var p = new { FirstName = \"Bill\", LastName = \"Ga

Answer 1

While I totally understand the style preference and picked concatenation for my first answer partly based on my own preference, part of my decision was based on the thought that concatenation would be faster. So, out of curiosity, I tested it and the results were staggering, especially for such a small string.

Using the following code:

    System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch s = new System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch();

    var p = new { FirstName = "Bill", LastName = "Gates" };

    s.Start();
    Console.WriteLine("{0} {1}", p.FirstName, p.LastName);
    s.Stop();
    Console.WriteLine("Console.WriteLine(\"{0} {1}\", p.FirstName, p.LastName); took: " + s.ElapsedMilliseconds + "ms - " + s.ElapsedTicks + " ticks");

    s.Reset();
    s.Start();
    Console.WriteLine(p.FirstName + " " + p.LastName);
    s.Stop();

    Console.WriteLine("Console.WriteLine(p.FirstName + \" \" + p.LastName); took: " + s.ElapsedMilliseconds + "ms - " + s.ElapsedTicks + " ticks");

I got the following results:

Bill Gates
Console.WriteLine("{0} {1}", p.FirstName, p.LastName); took: 2ms - 7280 ticks
Bill Gates
Console.WriteLine(p.FirstName + " " + p.LastName); took: 0ms - 67 ticks

Using the formatting method is over 100 times slower!! Concatenation didn't even register as 1ms, which is why I output the timer ticks as well.