StringBuilder.GetChunks Method

Definition

Namespace:

System.Text

Assembly:

System.Runtime.dll

Source:

StringBuilder.cs

Returns an object that can be used to iterate through the chunks of characters represented in a ReadOnlyMemory<Char> created from this StringBuilder instance.

public:
 System::Text::StringBuilder::ChunkEnumerator GetChunks();

public System.Text.StringBuilder.ChunkEnumerator GetChunks ();

member this.GetChunks : unit -> System.Text.StringBuilder.ChunkEnumerator

Public Function GetChunks () As StringBuilder.ChunkEnumerator

Returns

StringBuilder.ChunkEnumerator

An enumerator for the chunks in the ReadOnlyMemory<Char>.

Remarks

You can iterate the chunks in the memory range with code like the following:

foreach (ReadOnlyMemory<char> chunk in sb.GetChunks())
    foreach(char ch in chunk.Span)
        { /* operations on ch */ }

The purpose of this method is to efficiently extract the data of a constant StringBuilder. If the StringBuilder is modified while the chunk enumeration is incomplete, the result is undefined. StringBuilder is also not thread-safe, so operating on it with concurrent threads is illegal.

The ReadOnlyMemory<T> chunks returned are not guaranteed to remain unchanged if the StringBuilder is modified, so do not cache them for later use.

Creating a ReadOnlySpan<T> from a ReadOnlyMemory<T> (as the ReadOnlyMemory<T>.Span method does in the previous example) is expensive, so create a local variable for the span if you need to use it in a nested for statement. For example:

foreach (ReadOnlyMemory<char> chunk in sb.GetChunks())
{
    var span = chunk.Span;
    for(int i = 0; i < span.Length; i++)
    {
        /* operations on span[i] */
    }
}