Use Your Strings Wisely

When I was first learning to code, I was always told to use my strings in applications wisely. It's very easy to use strings without much thought. I think strings are forgiving compared to any other data type...too forgiving.

I was going to write a full blown blog post on the best way to use the string data type, but I found a good blog post that explains everything and I will use for reference when guiding new developers to my somewhat infinite wisdom. :-)

Zeeshan Umar, wrote a very interesting blog post a few years ago (but still relevant) that I only happened to find, explaining some new interesting ways on how to use strings efficiently. The following approach caught my eye:

string errorCode1 = "ec-1001";

if (String.Compare(errorCode1,"ec-1001",true) == 0)
{
   //Do something...
}

The String.Compare constantly stares me in the face via Visual Studio intellisense but never thought of using it. I will be using this approach if I need to check a string whilst using an conditional statement.

If you happen to find anymore interesting ways to efficiently use strings, please leave a comment.