How do I convert an Int to a String in C# without using ToString()?

Something like this:

public string IntToString(int a)
{    
    var chars = new[] { "0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9" };
    var str = string.Empty;
    if (a == 0)
    {
        str = chars[0];
    }
    else if (a == int.MinValue)
    {
        str = "-2147483648";
    }
    else
    {
        bool isNegative = (a < 0);
        if (isNegative)
        {
            a = -a;
        }

        while (a > 0)
        {
            str = chars[a % 10] + str;
            a /= 10;
        }

        if (isNegative)
        {
            str = "-" + str;
        }
    }

    return str;
}

Update: Here’s another version which is shorter and should perform much better, since it eliminates all string concatenation in favor of manipulating a fixed-length array. It supports bases up to 16, but it would be easy to extend it to higher bases. It could probably be improved further:

public string IntToString(int a, int radix)
{
    var chars = "0123456789ABCDEF".ToCharArray();
    var str = new char[32]; // maximum number of chars in any base
    var i = str.Length;
    bool isNegative = (a < 0);
    if (a <= 0) // handles 0 and int.MinValue special cases
    {
        str[--i] = chars[-(a % radix)];
        a = -(a / radix);
    }

    while (a != 0)
    {
        str[--i] = chars[a % radix];
        a /= radix;
    }

    if (isNegative)
    {
        str[--i] = '-';
    }

    return new string(str, i, str.Length - i);
}