ToString - Different Syntax? 2

[GHolden]

Hi,

I am very new to C# (started today!). There seems to be two ways to convert an integer variable (in this case x) to a string:

i.e.

MyString = Convert.ToString(x)
MyString = x.ToString()

Can anyone tell me if there is any reason for using one or other method, or are they essentially the same?

Thanks.


There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

 

[Nelviticus]

Convert.ToString(myObject) will use one of the ToString methods of System.Convert to produce the result.

myObject.ToString() will use the ToString method of myObject, which the creator of the object can modify to be whatever they like.

For things like ints both methods will produce the same result, but if you wanted to you could (for instance) create your own type based on int that returned "one hundred and forty-three" instead of "143" when you called its ToString method.

I hope I've explained that properly, I'm not that hot on terminology!

Nelviticus

 

[chiph]

Like Nelviticus says -- most of the time you get the same results. But it's possible to override the ToString method in one of your classes (to return something specific to that type), in which case they might not be the same.

Chip H.


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[cappmgr]

The way I look at it is Convert.xxxx will convert one base datatype to another. datatype.ToString() will give the string representation with no conversion.
Marty

 

[GHolden]

Thanks very much both of you. Very helpful.



There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.