In C#, should I use string.Empty or String.Empty or "" to intitialize a string?

c# .net string initialization
Daniel Kreiseder picture Daniel Kreiseder · Nov 4, 2008 · Viewed 241.7k times · Source

In C#, I want to initialize a string value with an empty string.

How should I do this? What is the right way, and why?

string willi = string.Empty;

or

string willi = String.Empty;

or

string willi = "";

or what?

Answer

Jon Skeet picture Jon Skeet · Nov 4, 2008

Use whatever you and your team find the most readable.

Other answers have suggested that a new string is created every time you use "". This is not true - due to string interning, it will be created either once per assembly or once per AppDomain (or possibly once for the whole process - not sure on that front). This difference is negligible - massively, massively insignificant.

Which you find more readable is a different matter, however. It's subjective and will vary from person to person - so I suggest you find out what most people on your team like, and all go with that for consistency. Personally I find "" easier to read.

The argument that "" and " " are easily mistaken for each other doesn't really wash with me. Unless you're using a proportional font (and I haven't worked with any developers who do) it's pretty easy to tell the difference.

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