Convert List to String

Sorry, todays silly question (and easy points) but whats the best way to convert a list(of string) to a string with the values seperated by ,

Sorry ....

From stackoverflow

• String.Join(",", myListOfStrings.ToArray())
  

  spacemonkeys : ta blonde moment

• That depends on what you mean by "best". The least memory intensive is to first calculate the size of the final string, then create a StringBuilder with that capacity and add the strings to it.

  The StringBuilder will create a string buffer with the correct size, and that buffer is what you get from the ToString method as a string. This means that there are no extra intermediate strings or arrays created.

  // specify the separator
  string separator = ", ";
  
  // calculate the final length
  int len = separator.Length * (list.Count - 1);
  foreach (string s in list) len += s.Length;
  
  // put the strings in a StringBuilder
  StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder(len);
  builder.Append(list[0]);
  for (int i = 1; i < list.Count; i++) {
     builder.Append(separator).Append(list[i]);
  }
  
  // get the internal buffer as a string
  string result = builder.ToString();
  

  mquander : No matter what you mean by "best" this is probably not the best.

  Guffa : @mquander: It's the least memory intensive, I clearly stated that in the first paragraph. If you need to keep the memory load down, this is clearly the best method.

  Mehrdad Afshari : Not much difference in terms of memory intensiveness. There is no intermediate string in Join method. It's just the array of references.

  Meta-Knight : Profiling would give us the answer but I doubt there's a big enough difference to justify using this code instead of the one line String.Join.