c# string concatenation beyond StringBuilder

I compared in a race with 1 million iterations the execution times of

1. StringBuilder with an Action call to "Append" a single character (as string)
2. StringBuilder with a function call to "Append" a single character (as string)
3. direct string = string + character (as string)
4. StringBuilder with an Action called to "Append" a single character (as string) but initialized with 1M+1 size
5. StringBuilder with a direct call to "Append" a single character (as string) initialized
6. like 5 but a single character is added as a character.

Here the results in ms:

                V5 13

                V4 20

                V6 29

                V2 35

                V1 57

                V3 839343

As we see in V4/5/6 the initialization of a string builder without the need of reallocation is the absolute performance gain by far. The indirection using an action I would consider to be a cheap operation (see 4 vs 5). 

Using a StringBuilder, in this case, is a MUST as we can see it on the scoreboard. 

Interesting is that adding a character instead of a string doubles the execution time.

Comparing 1 and 4 makes it obvious how expensive the allocation of further storage is. 

In V3 garbage collection is called constantly.

While these results differ heavily (especially the numbers of the execution time) from run to run even on the same machine, they differ even more on different machines. Nevertheless, the statements derived are valid.

windows services - installation / deinstallation toggle script

Tried to find a script that installs a windows service if it is not installed and is capable to deinstall it if needed. Finally, I created myself the following:

sc query SERVICENAMEif %errorlevel% equ 0 (                echo uninstall                goto uninstall) else (                echo install                goto install)

Check if it is installed: if so uninstall, if not install. 

in :install call:

• sc create SERVICENAME binpath=%cd%\Service.exe displayname="the service" start=demand 
• if you need to set credentials for the startup then set: obj and password
• %cd% is the current directory
• sc start SERVICENAME

in :uninstall call:

• sc stop SERVICENAME
• sc delete SERVICENAME
• delete can already be called even if the service is still in "stopping" state so in a script it works the right way even with some timing issues

Printing web pages to pdf

As an extremely lazy person I started automating a lot of tasks... so many that I started writing the results (successful execution / failed execution) into the database to query for errors. Then I started writing the logs and execution times into db. It became so huge that we wrote a dashboard application to check state.

Today I want to forward this dashboard to some colleagues without granting them access to the platform... solution: mailing a pdf. I asked myself if there is a way to convert the html page into a pdf easily and found the following solution with chrome. The following snippets shows a batch script for windows.

@echo  %time%

@"C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --headless --disable-gpu --print-to-pdf=c:\{outputFolder}\output.pdf file:///{pathToIndex}/index.html

@echo  %time%

@pause

Keep an eye on the fact that the screenshot is taken after onload is executed which can take several seconds.

minimal .NET core web api

Hi,

today I tried to create a minimal .NET core web API application which returns a result as a foundation for a micro-service approach...

Here the code that works (pasted into main):


            WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
                .Configure(app =>
                {
                    app.Run(async context =>
                    {
                        using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(context.Response.Body))
                        {
                            await writer.WriteAsync(await Task.FromResult("this works..."));
                        }
                    });
                })
                .Build()
                .Run();

sql server local time and utc time

Hi,

there is a nice way to make a local DateTime value to a UTC DateTime value. First, I thought I can add a fixed amount of hours, but this is unfortunately not ok because change summer- to winter-time made the calculation invalid. So I found a very nice trick on StackOverflow...

http://sqlfiddle.com -> SQL Server

select getdate() as localtime, getutcdate() as utctime, datediff(hour, getdate(), getutcdate())

We can check the local time and the UTC time and add the delta as the offset to the local time. This is unfortunately only true if the local time value is in the same timezone as you are currently, but for my case it worked...

kr,
Daniel