CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#string.format
Ravi Gupta
Ravi Gupta

Reputation: 6450

Passing extra argument to string.Format() function in C#

Is there any side effect of passing and extra argument to the string.Format function in C#? I was looking at the string.Format documentation at MSDN but was unable to find an answer.

E.g.:

string str = string.Format("Hello_{0}", 255, 555);

Now, as you can see in the according to format string, we are supposed to pass only one argument after it, but I have passed two.

I have tried it on my end and everything looks fine to me, but I just want to make sure that it will not cause any problems in later runs.

Upvotes: 7

Views: 2919

Answers (2)

AlexH
AlexH

Reputation: 2700

If you look at the exception section of the link you provide for string.Format

"The index of a format item is less than zero, or greater than or equal to the length of the args array."

Microsoft doesn't indicate that it can throw if you have too much arguments, so it won't. The effect is a small loss of memory due to an useless parameter

Upvotes: 3

Rawling
Rawling

Reputation: 50104

Looking in Reflector, it will allocate a little more memory for building the string, but there's no massive repercussion for passing in an extra object.

There's also the "side effect" that, if you accidentally included a {n} in your format string where n was too large, and then added some spare arguments, you'd no longer get an exception but get a string with unexpected items in.

Upvotes: 8

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