@George:
sorry, but StringBuilder IS the PREFERRED way to create strings from data objects. String concatenation is bad due multiple allocating multiple objects in the heap and copying values around. StringBuilder pre allocates a buffer and operations write to this.
Memory Overhead: In C#, strings are immutable, meaning every time you concatenate two strings, a new string object is created in memory. If you're concatenating a large number of strings in a loop or repeatedly in your code, you may end up allocating a significant amount of memory unnecessarily.
Performance: String concatenation can be inefficient, especially when done repeatedly. Each concatenation operation involves creating a new string object and copying the contents of the original strings into the new string. This can result in poor performance, particularly in tight loops or high-throughput sections of your code.
Garbage Collection Overhead: String concatenation can generate a lot of temporary objects, which increases the workload for the garbage collector. Excessive garbage collection can lead to performance degradation and even cause your application to freeze or stutter.
Readability and Maintainability: Excessive string concatenation can make your code harder to read and maintain, especially if you're dealing with complex concatenations involving multiple variables or conditions.
To mitigate these issues, consider using StringBuilder for intensive string manipulations. StringBuilder is optimized for building strings efficiently because it allows you to modify a mutable buffer rather than creating new string objects. Additionally, use string interpolation ($"" syntax) or String.Join() method when concatenating a fixed number of strings or when readability is a concern.
In OOP you should not use anonymous arrays or objects but classes (types) to represent your data. Ok, if you read from data sources like SQL, files, (web) APIs a.s.o. you will get a data stream. Map this data to your own classes that will represent the data objects. e.g. :
class Person
{
public int Id {get; set;} = 0;
public string Firstname {get; set;} = string.Empty;
public int Age {get; set;} = 0;
etc...
override public string ToString ()
{
var sb = new StringBuilder ();
sb.Append ("Name: ");
sb.Append (Firstname);
sb.Append (" ");
sb.Append (Lastname);
etc...
return sb.ToString();
}
}
Now you can create a list of Persons:
List<Person> persons = [];
Read your data source and fill the list:
while (data.Read())
{
var p = new Person();
p.Id = data ["id"];
p.Firstname = data ["firstname"];
aso...
persons.Add (p);
};
...
foreach (var person in persons)
{
Console.WriteLine (person);
}
This short example is just one of many possible approaches to collect data in your application.