CSHARP.TYPE.ARRAYTOSTRING : toString on Array (C#)

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CSHARP.TYPE.ARRAYTOSTRING : toString on Array (C#)

Summary

Arrays are instances of System.Object in C#. As a consequence, all methods of System.Object can be invoked on arrays, However, this is not always sensible. In particular, calls to ToString() yield a string derived from the unique identifier of the object, which is likely to be useless for the programmer and not her intent when she called ToString().

It is possible that this warning is the consequence of refactoring, that replaced a collection class with an array but left the method calls unchanged.

Properties

Example

using System;

namespace DocumentationExamples
{

    public class CallsOnArray
    {
        private static CallsOnArrayA[] array;
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            array = new CallsOnArrayA[args.Length];
            for (int pos = 0; pos < args.Length; pos++)
                array[pos] = new CallsOnArrayA(args[pos]);
            Foo(array);
            Console.WriteLine(array);  // "toString on Array (C#)" warning issued here 
                                       // - call is inside Console.WriteLine() 
        }
        private static void Foo(object o)
        {
            string s = o.ToString();   // "toString on Array (C#)" warning issued here 
            Console.WriteLine(s);
        }
    }
  
    public class CallsOnArrayA
    {
        private int f;
        public CallsOnArrayA(string s)
        {
            f = s.Length;
        }
        public override string ToString()
        {
            return f.ToString();
        }
    }
}

Resolution

Replace the call with a call to that return a string with the elements of array or with an explicit iteration over the elements of the array.

Relevant Configuration File Parameters

The following configuration file parameters affect checks for this warning class.