Cost of multiple instantiations

Question

While working in a project today, I came across the following code:

pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<div id='lblDivP'>"));
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<table width=100%><tr><td colspan='2' align ='left'>"));
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(lblTitle);
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("</br>"));
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("</br>"));
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("</td></tr><tr><td colspan='2'>"));
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(lbltitle1);
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("</br>"));
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("</td></tr><tr><td colspan='2'>"));

My initial thought was: why in the world didn't they do this in one or two lines instead of creating so many new LiteralControls. My question is - is this sloppy and wasteful of memory, and should have been consolidated to one or two instantiations of LiteralControl, or is this not a big deal?

Answer 1

I could imagine that this is for a reason: If you create only one instance of LiteralControl for a particular value, you might only be able to add this object to the collection once, depending on the Controls container it goes into. Some collections do not allow the same, unique object to be in it twice or more; therefore the need to create many unique instances, even if some of them have the same value:

pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("</br>"));
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("</br>"));

In any case, that code doesn't look particularly nice to my eyes.

Answer 2

if they are all hard coded string then someone should be fired.

The bare minimum 10 second refactor...

pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<div id='lblDivP'><table width=100%><tr><td colspan='2' align ='left'>"));
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(lblTitle);
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("</br></br></td></tr><tr><td colspan='2'>"));
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(lbltitle1);
pcShowByCategory.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("</br></td></tr><tr><td colspan='2'>"));

...is still pretty rubbish but not quite so blood curdling.

Still screening for a rethink though.