char + char = int? Why? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Because a char plus another char can exceed the maximum value permitted for a char variable, that's why the result of that operation is converted to a int variable.

Answer 2

As has been said, it is because a char has the Int32 value containing its unicode value.

If you want to concatenate chars into a string you can do one of the following:

Pass an array of chars to a new string:

var pr = new string(new char[] { 'R', 'G', 'B', 'Y', 'P' });

Use a StringBuilder:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.Append('R');
etc...

Start off with a string:

var pr = string.Empty + 'R' + 'G' + 'B' + 'Y' + 'P';

Cast each to a string (or just the 1st one will work just as well):

var pr = (string)'R' + (string)'G' + (string)'B' + (string)'Y' + (string)'P';

Answer 3

The point is, that many C# concepts are coming from C++ and C.

In these languages a single character constant (like 'A') is represented as their Ascii value, and despite what one may expect, it's type is not char but int (yes 'A' is an int, the same as writing 65).

Thus, the addition of all these values is like writing a series of ascii character codes, i.e.

   var pr= 82 + 71 + 66 + ...;

This has been a design decision in C / C++ at some point (its going back to the 70's with C).