How to handle out of memory exception string builder

Question

I have this method that is expected to return a string but the string is pretty big maybe in GB. Currently this runs into out of memory exception.

I was thinking I would write to a file (random filename) then read it delete the file and send back the response. Tried MemoryStream and StreamWriter that too ran into out of memory exception.

Did not want to initialize StringBuilder with a capacity since the size was not known and I think it needs a continuous block of memory.

What is the best course of action to solve this problem?

    public string Result()
    {
        StringBuilder response = new StringBuilder();
        for (int i = 1; i <= Int.Max; i++)
        {
            response.Append("keep adding some text {0}", i);
            response.Append(Environment.NewLine);
        }

        return response.ToString();
    }

If you used StreamWriter, and it's backing strategy was to write to memory then, yes, you would get a OutOfMemory exception. You might try using a file stream, such as one that writes to the operating system's transient store (e.g., the temp directory). If performance is not a concern, you can simply call Flush() on the file stream after you write to it. Though, one wouldn't be wrong suggesting that you just write straight to a file in that case, with no buffering. — kevin628
– kevin628, Commented Mar 8, 2016 at 0:36
It is better to store the records piece by piece than dumping them together. Do you have code where you use the Result()? — Ian
– Ian, Commented Mar 8, 2016 at 1:54
How are you sending back the response? If this is a web service, you could always write straight to the response stream... — Simon MᶜKenzie
– Simon MᶜKenzie, Commented Mar 8, 2016 at 8:47

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:31:11Z

4

Even if you could solve the memory problem on the StringBuilder, the resulting string by calling response.ToString() would be larger than the maximum length of a string in .NET, see: https://stackoverflow.com/a/140749/3997704

So you will have to make your function store its result elsewhere, like in a file.

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:31

CommunityBot

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answered Mar 8, 2016 at 8:45

mnwsmit

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