Empty String or string.Empty in C#?

Should you use the empty string constant or string.Empty in C#?

[maacpiash]

That "unfortunately!" _sigh_ at the end 😄

[modernkennnern]

I always use string.Empty because it makes the intention clearer

[mikicerise]

*spits out coffee* You could change the value of string.Empty!? MS WTF!? xD

[asherrfacee]

Great tips as always.
I always used string.Empty because that’s how I was taught so I appreciate the deep dive

[pokefreak]

Probably the most comprehensive short about a technical topic I've ever seen, good job!

[chrisspellman]

I think string.empty also gives clear intent. There's no question what should be there at that moment. Making it far more readable

[maciejp]

Loved the "Unfortunately"!!!

[xlerb]

Good summary of "" vs string.Empty. On that last funny comment, I once worked with a programming language called SanScript where for a long time you could say (SanScript syntax converted to something like C#) :

procedure Foo (INOUT int bar) {
bar = 2;
}
...
main() {
Foo(1);
// prints "2"
}
Yup. After you called Foo the literal 1 now had the value 2 for the rest of the script. It was a pretty simple bug, literals in that language were just like variables except they were initialized by the compiler and you _shouldn't_ have been able to set them. The bug was simply that the compiler didn't check that the reference you were passing in to satisfy the INOUT parameter was actually a writable value. As you can imagine we had a lot of fun with that one until it was fixed.

[Revlissilversword]

They had performance differences a long long time ago.

[ilh]

It's also easier to search for references of string.Empty in the code base rather than having to do a text search on "".

[veddy]

im grateful to have programmed for years and never found out string.Empty was a thing

[MrMatthewLayton]

What I'm curious about is why the framework designers decided to make string.Empty a static readonly, instead of a const. I feel like that would have made more sense, given other default values like int.MaxValue, or double.E are const, and as you suggested, it would be more usable; i.e. in switch cases. Do you know why the choice for static readonly rather than const?

[klocugh]

Gotta keep that reflection hack in mind lmao

[TheBuzzSaw]

I used to religiously specify string.Empty, but these days, I've settled on simply "". Works more places. Still clear intent.

[XoloJay]

As a c# old timer, you got so used to using String.Empty because you were "bad" if you didn't, it's hard to change even though it doesn't matter now.

[dongct]

so "" create a whole new string object and string.Empty references the existing empty string object

[charlesmayberry]

Also Empty being a "special" type of string, allows a "if(string.IsEmpty)" check rather than a check against just if(empty == "") which reduced the chance of an error in some cases. This can also make intention clearer for some cases. As you mentioned case switches require a constant. So in that case you'd not use the string.Empty. This is a great quick rundown, however both have a place and like most things in life the answer to which you use is dependent on context

[KoboldAdvocate]

string.Empty is one of those things you don't realize you miss until you're using a language which doesn't have it

[EEEdoman]

okay that last bit is super cursed LMAO

[cn-ml]

Why did they not decide to make string.Empty a constant instead of a static readonly?