Using string.Format for simple things?
.net, string-concatenation, string-formatting
Solution
For simple string concatenations use the `+` approach. It is clearer for simple things that don't require a format.
For more complex strings that have a certain format and where it is useful to retain the structure of the entire string and provide a placeholder for the input, use `String.Format`.
And yes, there is an overhead. `String.Format` uses a StringBuilder underneath the covers. Simple string concatenations will be much quicker in those scenarios. A couple of benchmarks and blog posts on this topic can be found quite easily. Of course it all depends on your usage. If small string concats are occurring in a loop then repeated usage of `String.Format` will likely be more noticeable than a straightforward `+` concat. If you are building up a large string in a loop then the classic example is to prefer `StringBuilder` and related questions on concat versus StringBuilder can be found on SO.
EDIT: To clarify, this serves little purpose: `String.Format("{0}{1}", a, b)` since there is not much formatting. It's simply `a + b`. Unfortunately I've come across such examples in production code and as soon as I see String.Format I expect to see something that needs to be structured a certain way, not a straightforward concat.
OTOH, consider this phone number: `"(" + area + ") " + number + " x" + extension` - there's too much going on and it's not easy to modify. In this case a String.Format is preferable: `String.Format("({0}) {1} x{2}", area, number, extension)`. This is still a trivial example but you get the idea.
Problem
In my early .Net programming days, I used string.Format() only for complex string concatenations, for example to compile strings as Problem with customer order 234 of date 2/2/2002 and payment id 55543. But now I use string.Format for almost every string concatenation I have to do, also simple ones such as prefixing a string with something. ``` Console.WriteLine(string.Format("\t\t{0}", myString)); ``` Is there any possible overhead on this? Maybe I should use the regular `+` operator to do these simple operations? What's your opinion on this?