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>Another newbie question -- isn't StringBuilder a bazillion times faster than String?


The purpose of StringBuilder is to avoid (1) Creating a lot of objects - stored on the heap and (2) cleaning up the objects when they are no longer needed = freeing space + compacting part of the heap

But creating a stringbuilder is also an object. It keeps an array (which is also an object) to store the characters. So, that's also two objects
Depending on what you do, it may have to expand the array. The way .net works is to create another array and copy the contents

For a few operations on a string, it may be better not to use the stringbuilder.



It depends