Why does C# not define an addition operation for char's?

Question

As the title says. Related to this question.

Why does the following code not work? It seems reasonable logically.

string foo = \'a\' + \'b\'; // Fail         


        

Answer 1

To get your chars to "add" up you could do one of several things similar to your original intent:

string foo2 = 'a' + "" + 'b'; //  Succeeds
string foo3 = 'a'.ToString() + 'b'.ToString(); // Succeeds
string foo4 = string.Concat('a', 'b'); // Succeeds

For the foo2 example you give the compiler a clue by dropping in an empty string and force an implicit char to string conversion for each char individually.

For the foo3 example you use the ToString call on each character to allow the addition of two strings.