For example, String("Abc", 5) produced "AbcAbcAbcAbcAbc".

In VB.NET, the String() function was dropped, probably because the name conflicts with the construction of a new String value, as in Dim str As New String().

When they dropped it from the language, I would have thought that they would replace it with a new function — maybe something like StrClone().

Searching the web, the question seems to be asked quite often, "How can you do the equivalent of String() in VB.NET?"

Annoyingly, every time it is asked, someone invariably answers by saying they should use the StrDup() function, or New String("A", 5).  They completely disregard that the person wants to concatenate a multi-character string, not one character.

One person even suggested incorrectly that the String constructor could be used to do it — as in New String("Abc", 5) — which it can't.  That would produce a string of 5 "A" characters.

So here is an easy solution.

To create a string consisting of 10 copies of "Abc":

MyString = Replace(Space(10), " ", "Abc")

Or, if you want to use all .NET framework methods (instead of the Visual Basic library), use the following:

MyString = New String(" "c, 10).Replace(" ", "Abc")

Note: the "c" character after the space (" "c) means a literal character (Char) instead of a character string.  It is a tiny efficiency.

Yes, there are other ways of doing this, perhaps by manipulating character arrays.  This, however, is a simple, m....

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