why doesn't input = charArray.ToString() return a string?

Question

I'm writing a program that takes a string as input and reverses it. In doing so I came across a behavior that I'm not understanding.

Why doesn't this return a string? Instead it returns System.Char[].

using System;

public static class ReverseString
{
    public static string Reverse(string input)
    {
        if (input.Length == 0)
        {
            return input;
        }
        char[] charArray = input.ToCharArray();
        Array.Reverse(charArray);
        input = charArray.ToString();

        return input;
    }
}

Working Code:

using System;

public static class ReverseString
{
    public static string Reverse(string input)
    {
        if (input.Length == 0)
        {
            return input;
        }
        char[] charArray = input.ToCharArray();
        Array.Reverse(charArray);

        return new string(charArray);
    }
}

`ToString` returns the type name (*such as 'System.Char[]') for anything where `ToString` isnt overridden. If you want a string, create a string — Ňɏssa Pøngjǣrdenlarp, Dec 08 '18 at 22:57
It **does** return a string, it just doesn't return a string with the value you want. It returns "System.Char[]" **as a string**. — Lasse V. Karlsen, Dec 08 '18 at 23:01
I think I'm following. I see in the documentation for ToString that "Default implementations of the Object.ToString method return the fully qualified name of the object's type." This makes perfect sense. — jnat, Dec 08 '18 at 23:06

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 08 '18 at 23:10

any method which does not have ToString() implementation returns Object name as string. In this case Char[] (character Array) does not have ToString() implementation hence does not know how to convert character array to string. In this case, you need to create new string.

var reversedString = new string(charArray);

why doesn't input = charArray.ToString() return a string?

1 Answers1