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c#conditional-statementsstringbuilder

How to check if a StringBuilder is empty?

I want to test if the StringBuilder is empty but there is no IsEmpty method or property.

How does one determine this?

Solution

  • If you look at the documentation of StringBuilder it has only 4 properties. One of them is Length.

    The length of a StringBuilder object is defined by its number of Char objects.

    You can use the Length property:

    Gets or sets the length of the current StringBuilder object.

    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

if (sb.Length != 0)
{
    // you have found some difference
}

    Another possibility would be to treat it as a string by using the String.IsNullOrEmpty method and condense the builder to a string using the ToString method. You can even grab the resulting string and assign it to a variable which you would use if you have found some differences:

    string difference = ""; 

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(difference = sb.ToString()))
{
    Console.WriteLine(difference);      
}