What is the advantage of using Path.Combine over concatenating strings with '+'?

Path.Combine uses the Path.PathSeparator and it checks whether the first path already has a separator at the end so it will not duplicate the separators. Additionally, it checks whether the path elements to combine have invalid chars.

Path.Combine does more things than just a string concatenation. If you look at the source code;

• Checks both paths has invalid character or not
• Checks second parameter is root path or not
• Checks last character of first path is director or alt directory or volume separator or not. If not, concatenate both string with directory separator between then

Here is the implementation

public static string Combine(string path1, string path2)
{
    if (path1 == null || path2 == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException((path1 == null) ? "path1" : "path2");
    }
    Path.CheckInvalidPathChars(path1, false);
    Path.CheckInvalidPathChars(path2, false);
    return Path.CombineNoChecks(path1, path2);
}

private static string CombineNoChecks(string path1, string path2)
{
    if (path2.Length == 0)
    {
        return path1;
    }
    if (path1.Length == 0)
    {
        return path2;
    }
    if (Path.IsPathRooted(path2))
    {
        return path2;
    }
    char c = path1[path1.Length - 1];
    if (c != Path.DirectorySeparatorChar && c != Path.AltDirectorySeparatorChar && c != Path.VolumeSeparatorChar)
    {
        return path1 + Path.DirectorySeparatorChar + path2;
    }
    return path1 + path2;
}

According to this documentation Path.Combine internally performs a string concatenation using +-Operator.

 private static String CombineNoChecks(String path1, String path2) {
        if (path2.Length == 0)
            return path1;

        if (path1.Length == 0)
            return path2;

        if (IsPathRooted(path2))
            return path2;

        char ch = path1[path1.Length - 1];
        if (ch != DirectorySeparatorChar && ch != AltDirectorySeparatorChar && ch != VolumeSeparatorChar) 
            return path1 + DirectorySeparatorCharAsString + path2;
        return path1 + path2;
    }