What is the difference between String and StringBu

Question

What is the difference between String and StringBuffer in Java?

Is there a maximum size for String?

Answer 1

String is immutable, meaning that when you perform an operation on a String you are really creating a whole new String.

StringBuffer is mutable, and you can append to it as well as reset its length to 0.

In practice, the compiler seems to use StringBuffer during String concatenation for performance reasons.

Answer 2

String                                          StringBuffer

Immutable                                       Mutable
String s=new String("karthik");                StringBuffer sb=new StringBuffer("karthik")
s.concat("reddy");                             sb.append("reddy");
System.out.println(s);                         System.out.println(sb);
O/P:karthik                                    O/P:karthikreddy

--->once we created a String object            ---->once we created a StringBuffer object
we can't perform any changes in the existing  we can perform any changes in the existing
object.If we are trying to perform any        object.It is nothing but mutablity of 
changes with those changes a new object       of a StrongBuffer object
will be created.It is nothing but Immutability
of a String object

Use String--->If you require immutabilty
Use StringBuffer---->If you require mutable + threadsafety
Use StringBuilder--->If you require mutable + with out threadsafety

String s=new String("karthik");
--->here 2 objects will be created one is heap and the other is in stringconstantpool(scp) and s is always pointing to heap object

String s="karthik"; 
--->In this case only one object will be created in scp and s is always pointing to that object only

Answer 3

A String is an immutable character array.

A StringBuffer is a mutable character array. Often converted back to String when done mutating.

Since both are an array, the maximum size for both is equal to the maximum size of an integer, which is 2^31-1 (see JavaDoc, also check out the JavaDoc for both String and StringBuffer).This is because the .length argument of an array is a primitive int. (See Arrays).

Answer 4

A String is immutable, i.e. when it's created, it can never change.

A StringBuffer (or its non-synchronized cousin StringBuilder) is used when you need to construct a string piece by piece without the performance overhead of constructing lots of little Strings along the way.

The maximum length for both is Integer.MAX_VALUE, because they are stored internally as arrays, and Java arrays only have an int for their length pseudo-field.

The performance improvement between Strings and StringBuffers for multiple concatenation is quite significant. If you run the following test code, you will see the difference. On my ancient laptop with Java 6, I get these results:

Concat with String took: 1781ms
Concat with StringBuffer took: 0ms

public class Concat
{
    public static String concatWithString()
    {
        String t = "Cat";
        for (int i=0; i<10000; i++)
        {
            t = t + "Dog";
        }
        return t;
    }
    public static String concatWithStringBuffer()
    {
        StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("Cat");
        for (int i=0; i<10000; i++)
        {
            sb.append("Dog");
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
        concatWithString();
        System.out.println("Concat with String took: " + (System.currentTimeMillis() - start) + "ms");
        start = System.currentTimeMillis();
        concatWithStringBuffer();
        System.out.println("Concat with StringBuffer took: " + (System.currentTimeMillis() - start) + "ms");
    }
}

Answer 5

While I understand that this is not a major differentiating factor, I noticed today that StringBuffer(and StringBuilder) provides some interesting methods that String doesn't.

• reverse()
• setCharAt()

Answer 6

Performance wise StringBuffer is much better than String ; because whenever you apply concatenation on String Object then new String object are created on each concatenation.

Principal Rule : String are immutable(Non Modifiable) and StringBuffer are mutable(Modifiable)

Here is the programmatic experiment where you get the performance difference

public class Test {

  public static int LOOP_ITERATION= 100000;

  public static void stringTest(){
    long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
    String string = "This";
    for(int i=0;i<LOOP_ITERATION;i++){
        string = string+"Yasir";
    }

    long endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
    System.out.println(endTime - startTime);    
  }

  public static void stringBufferTest(){
    long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
    StringBuffer stringBuffer = new StringBuffer("This");
    for(int i=0;i<LOOP_ITERATION;i++){
        stringBuffer.append("Yasir");
    }

    long endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
    System.out.println(endTime - startTime);
  }

  public static void main(String []args){
    stringTest()
    stringBufferTest(); 
  }
 }

Output of String are in my machine 14800

Output of StringBuffer are in my machine 14