In Java, when we talk about String interning, we describe how Java stores only one copy of every distinct String value in the string pool, in order to reuse String objects to save memory from a program. This practically means, that each String object is stored only once in memory, regardless of how many times the same String may appear in the code.
So, as you already guessed, in this example we are going to talk about interning Strings and comparing them with the use of intern() method.
String intern() method:
The most common methods for String comparison are the equals() and equalsIgnoreCase() methods. However, these methods may need large amount of memory for large sequence of characters. The Java String intern() method helps us to improve the performance of the comparison between two Strings.
The intern() method, when applied to a String object, returns a reference to this object (from the hash set of Strings that Java makes), that has the same contents as the original object. Thus, if a code uses the intern() method for several String objects, then our program will use significantly less memory , because it will reuse the references of the objects in the comparison between these Strings.
Keep in mind, that Java automatically interns String literals. This means that the intern() method is to be used on Strings that are constructed with new String().
Example:
JavaStringIntern.java
package com.javacodegeeks.javabasics.string;
public class JavaStringIntern {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String str1 = "JavaCodeGeeks";
String str2 = "JavaCodeGeeks";
String str3 = "JavaCodeGeeks".intern();
String str4 = new String("JavaCodeGeeks");
String str5 = new String("JavaCodeGeeks").intern();
System.out.println("Are str1 and str2 the same: " + (str1 == str2));
System.out.println("Are str1 and str3 the same: " + (str1 == str3));
System.out.println("Are str1 and str4 the same: " + (str1 == str4)); //this should be "false" because str4 is not interned
System.out.println("Are str1 and str4.intern() the same: " + (str1 == str4.intern())); //this should be "true" now
System.out.println("Are str1 and str5 the same: " + (str1 == str5));
}
}Output:
Are str1 and str2 the same: true
Are str1 and str3 the same: true
Are str1 and str4 the same: false
Are str1 and str4.intern() the same: true
Are str1 and str5 the same: true
As a conclusion, the intern() method, can be very useful when we want to search through Strings, or when we want to retrieve information from a large text. The best practice is to use String.intern() on Strings that occur multiple times inside a program, and do this only when you want to save memory. It will be effective depending on the ratio of unique versus duplicate String objects.
