Whether Using final With Local Variable Will Increase Performance?

[Tanzy Akhtar]

Hi,

I am a bit curious to know about using final keyword with local variables.
Will it increase the performance or it's just a good programming style to use final with local variable?

Thanks,
Tanzy.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Try it. Use the System.nanoTime method before and after a method call, and see whether it makes any difference.
Use the javap tool with the -c option to print out the bytecode, and see whether there is any difference.

[Rob Spoor]

If the value for the final variable is a primitive or String literal, or a String that is created by appending primitives and String literals (a.k.a. compile time constants), those will be inlined. For example:

final int i = 13;
final double d = 481.0;
final String s = "Hello";
final String s2 = i + s + d;

All three will have all their references replaced by their value. For instance, System.out.println(s2) will actually be compiled as System.out.println("13Hello481.0").

If the final variable is constructed using anything else, including the results of any method, then the above does not hold.

[Tanzy Akhtar]

Thank you Rob for the valuable response.

Well, if we are using final with local variable and the the value depends on runtime,
then how about performance?

For instance--

private customCreateDir(....) {
     
   ......
   ......

   final boolean dirCreated =  dir.mkdirs();
                     OR,
   boolean dirCreated =  dir.mkdirs();

}

which one is better to use?


Thanks,
Tanzy.

[Rob Spoor]

In those cases just follow Campbell's advice.

[fred rosenberger]

The general rule that most programmers SHOULD live by is this:

Write code that makes sense, that does what you need, and is simple.

ONLY then, if you have a performance issue, should you consider optimizing it. and then, use a tool to find out where the slowdowns are. 99.9% of the time, the slowdown is somewhere you are not looking, and you can spend hours changing one thing to gain practically nothing, while making a modest change somewhere else could give HUGE boosts.

[Monu Tripathi]

You can read this article written by Brian Goetz on usage of final keyword in code.

[Tanzy Akhtar]

Thank you rosenberger for giving such a nice advice.

Thank you Ritchie for giving nice trick to chek performance issues.

Thank you Tripathi for giving such a nice link.

Thank you all for valuable answers and suggestions.

[Campbell Ritchie]

You're welcome