String or StringBuilder return values?

Question

If I am building a string using a StringBuilder object in a method, would it make sense to:

Return the StringBuilder object, and let the calling code call ToString()?

Answer 1

I think it depends what you are doing with the string once it leaves the method. If you are going to continue appending to it then you might want to consider returning a stringbuilder for greater efficiency. If you are always going to call .ToString() on it then you should do that inside the method for better encapsulation.