Difference between StringBuilder and StringBuffer

Question

What is the main difference between StringBuffer and StringBuilder? Is there any performance issues when deciding on any one of these?

Answer 1

StringBuilder is faster than StringBuffer because it's not synchronized.

Here's a simple benchmark test:

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int N = 77777777;
        long t;

        {
            StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
            t = System.currentTimeMillis();
            for (int i = N; i --> 0 ;) {
                sb.append("");
            }
            System.out.println(System.currentTimeMillis() - t);
        }

        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            t = System.currentTimeMillis();
            for (int i = N; i > 0 ; i--) {
                sb.append("");
            }
            System.out.println(System.currentTimeMillis() - t);
        }
    }
}

A test run gives the numbers of 2241 ms for StringBuffer vs 753 ms for StringBuilder.