[Mono-list] Problems with CopyTo, using Contains(...) and inserting a character from one string into another.

[Chris Howie]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 6:53 AM, PFJ <pjohnson1 at uclan.ac.uk> wrote:
> I'm trying to copy a specific section of a string to another string.
> My code looks like this
>
> void search(string s)
> string newstring;
> for (int a = 0 ; a < s.Length; ++a)
> {
>  if (a + 1 > s.Length)
>   continue;
>  if (s[a + 1] < 'a')
>   s.CopyTo(a, newstring.ToCharArray(), 0, 1);
>  else
>  {
>   s.CopyTo(a, newstring.ToCharArray(),0, 2);
>   a++;
>  }
> }

I did not look too deeply into the exception you are getting because
this approach is simply wrong.  You are copying the characters into a
new array that you never use again.  In other words, this block of
code would do absolutely nothing but burn CPU cycles even if it did
work.

You probably want to look at the StringBuilder class as well.  It
better encapsulates actions like this and is designed to prevent you
from creating several intermediate String objects (which you don't do
here but are very likely to do if you haven't done this kind of thing
before).

-- 
Chris Howie
http://www.chrishowie.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers