Note, I am not quite sure this question belongs to this site but I try to be constructive.
Why does the code
IntPtr ptr = new IntPtr(1234);
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0:X8}", ptr));
Console.WriteLine(ptr.ToString("X8"));
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0:X8}", ptr.ToInt32()));
output
1234
000004D2
000004D2
Why isn't the hex formatting applied to the IntPtr
argument directly, when requested so in formatting? Are there any known arguments against designing the functionality so - ?
If there are no arguments against such design then by which channel should I report this issue to Microsoft?
Note also, that the debugger displays the IntPtr
value in hex if requested so.
I find that it would be quite intuitive and relatively frequent way of printing out IntPtr
values. I also have found code written by other people who used the first line and obviously expected the hex result, but actually the result was different. It also took some time for me to notice the issue, which complicated understanding the log messages.
For the String.Format
method to use a format string for an argument, the argument has to implement the IFormattable
interface.
As the IntPtr
type doesn't implement IFormattable
, the String.Format
method will just call the parameterless ToString
method to turn the IntPtr
value into a string.