Can I add new methods to the String class in Java?

Question

I\'d like to add a method AddDefaultNamespace() to the String class in Java so that I can type \"myString\".AddDefaultNamespace() instead of

Answer 1

As everybody else has said, no you can't subclass String because it's final. But might something like the following help?

public final class NamespaceUtil {

    // private constructor cos this class only has a static method.
    private NamespaceUtil() {}

    public static String getDefaultNamespacedString(
            final String afterDotString) {
        return DEFAULT_NAMESPACE + "." + afterDotString;
    }

}

or maybe:

public final class NamespacedStringFactory {

    private final String namespace;

    public NamespacedStringFactory(final String namespace) {
        this.namespace = namespace;
    }

    public String getNamespacedString(final String afterDotString) {
        return namespace + "." + afterDotString;
    }

}