Strings, Immutablilty, and Garbage Collection

[Peter Kleczka]

Hi

I'm working with code that changes the color of alternating
table rows on a JSP. The following code is in a loop:

String colorString = ""
if (count%2 == 0)
{
colorString = SomeClass.A_STATIC_CONSTANT_1;
} else {
colorString = SomeClass.A_STATIC_CONSTANT_2;
}

Even though colorString is pointing to a constant, is
this not creating a new string for garbage collection
in each iteration of the loop?

Thanks,
Peter ([e-mail])

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

No. Take a few minutes and read this and this; you'll be glad you did, and you'll definitely understand my answer.

[Anonymous]

as Ernest says: it is just referring to the Object instance...

[Peter Kleczka]

Thanks Ernest

This makes sense now. Since the static references are going to hang around "forever" there is nothing to be garbage collected. But I assume the
original assignment (String colorString = "") would leave the empty string in garbage collection territory since there is nothing to reference it.

Thanks again,
Peter

[Steven Bell]

Actually no, since it is a 'String Literal' it will be interned and also hang around forever. There will be only one instance of String that contains "" unless one is created as new String("");