Java String.substring method potential memory leak?

Question

I was going through the String class API and looks like there is a potential memory leak caused by substring method as it shares same character array as original String.

Answer 1

In Java 7, String's subString is modified to :

/**
     * Returns a new string that is a substring of this string. The
     * substring begins with the character at the specified index and
     * extends to the end of this string. 

     * Examples:
     * 
     * "unhappy".substring(2) returns "happy"
     * "Harbison".substring(3) returns "bison"
     * "emptiness".substring(9) returns "" (an empty string)
     * 
     *
     * @param      beginIndex   the beginning index, inclusive.
     * @return     the specified substring.
     * @exception  IndexOutOfBoundsException  if
     *             beginIndex is negative or larger than the
     *             length of this String object.
     */
    public String substring(int beginIndex) {
        if (beginIndex < 0) {
            throw new StringIndexOutOfBoundsException(beginIndex);
        }
        int subLen = value.length - beginIndex;
        if (subLen < 0) {
            throw new StringIndexOutOfBoundsException(subLen);
        }
        return (beginIndex == 0) ? this : new String(value, beginIndex, subLen);
    }

Hence, everytime you do subString with beginIndex NOT equal to 0, we have new String Object.