[c#] Why .NET String is immutable?

As we all know, String is immutable. What are the reasons for String being immutable and the introduction of StringBuilder class as mutable?

Imagine being an OS working with a string that some other thread was modifying behind your back. How could you validate anything without making a copy?

There are five common ways by which a class data store data that cannot be modified outside the storing class' control:

1. As value-type primitives
2. By holding a freely-shareable reference to class object whose properties of interest are all immutable
3. By holding a reference to a mutable class object that will never be exposed to anything that might mutate any properties of interest
4. As a struct, whether "mutable" or "immutable", all of whose fields are of types #1-#4 (not #5).
5. By holding the only extant copy of a reference to an object whose properties can only be mutated via that reference.

Because strings are of variable length, they cannot be value-type primitives, nor can their character data be stored in a struct. Among the remaining choices, the only one which wouldn't require that strings' character data be stored in some kind of immutable object would be #5. While it would be possible to design a framework around option #5, that choice would require that any code which wanted a copy of a string that couldn't be changed outside its control would have to make a private copy for itself. While it hardly be impossible to do that, the amount of extra code required to do that, and the amount of extra run-time processing necessary to make defensive copies of everything, would far outweigh the slight benefits that could come from having string be mutable, especially given that there is a mutable string type (System.Text.StringBuilder) which accomplishes 99% of what could be accomplished with a mutable string.

You never have to defensively copy immutable data. Despite the fact that you need to copy it to mutate it, often the ability to freely alias and never have to worry about unintended consequences of this aliasing can lead to better performance because of the lack of defensive copying.

Imagine you pass a mutable string to a function but don't expect it to be changed. Then what if the function changes that string? In C++, for instance, you could simply do call-by-value (difference between std::string and std::string& parameter), but in C# it's all about references so if you passed mutable strings around every function could change it and trigger unexpected side effects.

This is just one of various reasons. Performance is another one (interned strings, for example).

Why are string types immutable in C#

String is a reference type, so it is never copied, but passed by reference. Compare this to the C++ std::string object (which is not immutable), which is passed by value. This means that if you want to use a String as a key in a Hashtable, you're fine in C++, because C++ will copy the string to store the key in the hashtable (actually std::hash_map, but still) for later comparison. So even if you later modify the std::string instance, you're fine. But in .Net, when you use a String in a Hashtable, it will store a reference to that instance. Now assume for a moment that strings aren't immutable, and see what happens: 1. Somebody inserts a value x with key "hello" into a Hashtable. 2. The Hashtable computes the hash value for the String, and places a reference to the string and the value x in the appropriate bucket. 3. The user modifies the String instance to be "bye". 4. Now somebody wants the value in the hashtable associated with "hello". It ends up looking in the correct bucket, but when comparing the strings it says "bye"!="hello", so no value is returned. 5. Maybe somebody wants the value "bye"? "bye" probably has a different hash, so the hashtable would look in a different bucket. No "bye" keys in that bucket, so our entry still isn't found.

Making strings immutable means that step 3 is impossible. If somebody modifies the string he's creating a new string object, leaving the old one alone. Which means the key in the hashtable is still "hello", and thus still correct.

So, probably among other things, immutable strings are a way to enable strings that are passed by reference to be used as keys in a hashtable or similar dictionary object.

string management is an expensive process. keeping strings immutable allows repeated strings to be reused, rather than re-created.

Strings are passed as reference types in .NET.

Reference types place a pointer on the stack, to the actual instance that resides on the managed heap. This is different to Value types, who hold their entire instance on the stack.

When a value type is passed as a parameter, the runtime creates a copy of the value on the stack and passes that value into a method. This is why integers must be passed with a 'ref' keyword to return an updated value.

When a reference type is passed, the runtime creates a copy of the pointer on the stack. That copied pointer still points to the original instance of the reference type.

The string type has an overloaded = operator which creates a copy of itself, instead of a copy of the pointer - making it behave more like a value type. However, if only the pointer was copied, a second string operation could accidently overwrite the value of a private member of another class causing some pretty nasty results.

As other posts have mentioned, the StringBuilder class allows for the creation of strings without the GC overhead.

Making strings immutable has many advantages. It provides automatic thread safety, and makes strings behave like an intrinsic type in a simple, effective manner. It also allows for extra efficiencies at runtime (such as allowing effective string interning to reduce resource usage), and has huge security advantages, since it's impossible for an third party API call to change your strings.

StringBuilder was added in order to address the one major disadvantage of immutable strings - runtime construction of immutable types causes a lot of GC pressure and is inherently slow. By making an explicit, mutable class to handle this, this issue is addressed without adding unneeded complication to the string class.

Strings are not really immutable. They are just publicly immutable. It means you cannot modify them from their public interface. But in the inside the are actually mutable.

If you don't believe me look at the String.Concat definition using reflector. The last lines are...

int length = str0.Length;
string dest = FastAllocateString(length + str1.Length);
FillStringChecked(dest, 0, str0);
FillStringChecked(dest, length, str1);
return dest;

As you can see the FastAllocateString returns an empty but allocated string and then it is modified by FillStringChecked

Actually the FastAllocateString is an extern method and the FillStringChecked is unsafe so it uses pointers to copy the bytes.

Maybe there are better examples but this is the one I have found so far.

Strings and other concrete objects are typically expressed as immutable objects to improve readability and runtime efficiency. Security is another, a process can't change your string and inject code into the string

Immutable Strings also prevent concurrency-related issues.

Just to throw this in, an often forgotten view is of security, picture this scenario if strings were mutable:

string dir = "C:\SomePlainFolder";

//Kick off another thread
GetDirectoryContents(dir);

void GetDirectoryContents(string directory)
{
  if(HasAccess(directory) {
    //Here the other thread changed the string to "C:\AllYourPasswords\"
    return Contents(directory);
  }
  return null;
}

You see how it could be very, very bad if you were allowed to mutate strings once they were passed.