LinkDotNet.StringBuilder 0.9.1

StringBuilder

A fast and low allocation StringBuilder for .NET.

Getting Started

Install the package:

PM> Install-Package LinkDotNet.StringBuilder

Afterwards use the package as follow:

ValueStringBuilder stringBuilder = new ValueStringBuilder();
stringBuilder.AppendLine("Hello World");

string result = stringBuilder.ToString();

What does it solve?

The dotnet version of the StringBuilder is a all purpose version which normally fits a wide variety of needs. But sometimes low allocation is key. Therefore I created the ValueStringBuilder. It is not a class but a ref struct which tries to do as less allocations as possible. If you want to know how the ValueStringBuilder works and why it uses allocations and is even faster, checkout this blog post. The blog goes a bit more in detail how it works with a simplistic version of the ValueStringBuilder.

What it doesn't solve!

The library is not meant as a general replacement for the StringBuilder shipped with the .net framework itself. You can head over to the documentation and read about the "Known limitations". The library works best for a small to medium amount of strings (not multiple 100'000 characters, even though it is still faster and uses less allocations). At anytime you can convert the ValueStringBuilder to a "normal" StringBuilder.

Documentation

A more detailed documentation can be found here.

Benchmark

The following table gives you a small comparison between the StringBuilder which is part of .NET and the ValueStringBuilder:

| Method              |     Mean |   Error |  StdDev |  Gen 0 | Allocated |
| ------------------- | -------: | ------: | ------: | -----: | --------: |
| DotNetStringBuilder | 430.7 ns | 8.52 ns | 7.55 ns | 0.3576 |   1,496 B |
| ValueStringBuilder  | 226.7 ns | 2.45 ns | 2.05 ns | 0.1395 |     584 B |

Checkout the Benchmark for more detailed comparison and setup.