Create a comma-separated strings in C#

Question

I have an object which holds many values, and some of them (not all values from the object) need to be put in a CSV string. My approach was this:

string csvString = o.number + "," + o.id + "," + o.whatever ....

Is there is a better, more elegant way?

Answer 1

If you put all your values in an array, at least you can use string.Join.

string[] myValues = new string[] { ... };
string csvString = string.Join(",", myValues);

You can also use the overload of string.Join that takes params string as the second parameter like this:

string csvString = string.Join(",", value1, value2, value3, ...);

Answer 2

Another approach is to use the CommaDelimitedStringCollection class from System.Configuration namespace/assembly. It behaves like a list plus it has an overriden ToString method that returns a comma-separated string.

Pros - More flexible than an array.

Cons - You can't pass a string containing a comma.

CommaDelimitedStringCollection list = new CommaDelimitedStringCollection();

list.AddRange(new string[] { "Huey", "Dewey" });
list.Add("Louie");
//list.Add(",");

string s = list.ToString(); //Huey,Dewey,Louie

Answer 3

You can use the string.Join method to do something like string.Join(",", o.Number, o.Id, o.whatever, ...).

edit: As digEmAll said, string.Join is faster than StringBuilder. They use an external implementation for the string.Join.

Profiling code (of course run in release without debug symbols):

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Stopwatch sw = new Stopwatch();
        string r;
        int iter = 10000;

        string[] values = { "a", "b", "c", "d", "a little bit longer please", "one more time" };

        sw.Restart();
        for (int i = 0; i < iter; i++)
            r = Program.StringJoin(",", values);
        sw.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine("string.Join ({0} times): {1}ms", iter, sw.ElapsedMilliseconds);

        sw.Restart();
        for (int i = 0; i < iter; i++)
            r = Program.StringBuilderAppend(",", values);
        sw.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine("StringBuilder.Append ({0} times): {1}ms", iter, sw.ElapsedMilliseconds);
        Console.ReadLine();
    }

    static string StringJoin(string seperator, params string[] values)
    {
        return string.Join(seperator, values);
    }

    static string StringBuilderAppend(string seperator, params string[] values)
    {
        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
        builder.Append(values[0]);
        for (int i = 1; i < values.Length; i++)
        {
            builder.Append(seperator);
            builder.Append(values[i]);
        }
        return builder.ToString();
    }
}

string.Join took 2ms on my machine and StringBuilder.Append 5ms. So there is noteworthy difference. Thanks to digAmAll for the hint.

Answer 4

If you're using .NET 4 you can use the overload for string.Join that takes an IEnumerable if you have them in a List, too:

string.Join(", ", strings);

Answer 5

You could override your object's ToString() method:

public override string ToString ()
{
    return string.Format ("{0},{1},{2}", this.number, this.id, this.whatever);
}

Answer 6

Yes, there can be multiple ways to do this.

If you have List/Array of strings then you can adopt it;

string[] myStrings = new string[] { "Hi", "stackoverflow", };
string csvString = string.Join(",", myStrings);  // csvString :: Hi,stackoverflow

If you have multiple strings then you can adopt it;

string st1 = "Hi";
string st2 = "stackoverflow";
string st3 = "team";
string csvString = string.Join(",", st1, st2, st3);  // csvString :: Hi,stackoverflow,team