P is for Programming

Why is there no string.Format Extension Method?

November 25, 2010

Why is there no built-in extension method like this?

public static string FormatOutput(this string format, params object[] args)
{
    return string.Format(format, args);
}

Now the following code

var output = string.Format("This guy's name is {0}", person.Name);

becomes this

var output = "This guy's name is {0}".FormatOutput(person.Name);

Which is much neater in my opinion.  Unfortunately we can’t name it ‘Format’ since the compiler gets confused between our extension method and the static method on the string class.

Tags: C#