What it is doing basically is reading an std::string from a given pointer.I was told that using a StringBuilder as I am is not the best way to achieve this, so I would like to know how this would be best written.As additional information, that is a pointer of a std::string and I've made that because I was originally curious if there was a way to read a std::string in C# without having to create a bridge using C++/CLI.How could I optimize this bit of code for best performance?public static string ReadStdString(IntPtr address){    var capacity = Marshal.ReadInt32(address + 24);    var length = Marshal.ReadInt32(address + 20);    var startStr = address + 4;    if (capacity > 15)        startStr = (IntPtr)Marshal.ReadInt32(address + 4);    var result = new StringBuilder();    for (var i = 0; i < length; i++)    {        result.Append((char)Marshal.ReadByte(startStr, i));    }    return result.ToString();}
Reading a pointer to a string
c#;strings;.net
var result = new StringBuilder();for (var i = 0; i < length; i++){    result.Append((char)Marshal.ReadByte(startStr, i));}You're working in a tight loop: a StringBuilder looks like a reasonable tool to use.One thing I would change that could impact performance (depending on the length of the string involved), is the StringBuilder constructor being used:var result = new StringBuilder(length);There's no reason not to specify the length of the string you're building if you know it from the start; that will reduce the overhead, since the internals of the builder won't need to manage growth.The loop is a one-liner. You have this one-liner just a few instructions above:if (capacity > 15)    startStr = (IntPtr)Marshal.ReadInt32(address + 4);Why does the loop have an explicit { } scope, but not the if block? It would be better to be consistent about scoping braces, and have them everywhere: if (capacity > 15) {     startStr = (IntPtr)Marshal.ReadInt32(address + 4); }An alternative to the StringBuilder could be to write the bytes into a MemoryStream:using (var stream = new MemoryStream(length)){    for (var i = 0; i < length; i++)    {        stream.WriteByte(Marshal.ReadByte(startStr, i));    }    return new StreamReader(stream).ReadToEnd();}The nice thing with this approach is that you don't need to cast every single byte of the string into a char. On the other hand, you need 2 objects instead of one, and you need to cleanly Dispose of the stream, too - depending on the length of the string, the overhead might just not be worth it, although my guts tell me the stream could be faster... but I think you'd need to race your horses to find out.