Why is there no String.Empty in Java?

Question

I understand that every time I type the string literal \"\", the same String object is referenced in the string pool.

But why doesn\'t the String API in

Answer 1

For those claiming "" and String.Empty are interchangeable or that "" is better, you are very wrong.

Each time you do something like myVariable = ""; you are creating an instance of an object. If Java's String object had an EMPTY public constant, there would only be 1 instance of the object ""

E.g: -

String.EMPTY = ""; //Simply demonstrating. I realize this is invalid syntax

myVar0 = String.EMPTY;
myVar1 = String.EMPTY;
myVar2 = String.EMPTY;
myVar3 = String.EMPTY;
myVar4 = String.EMPTY;
myVar5 = String.EMPTY;
myVar6 = String.EMPTY;
myVar7 = String.EMPTY;
myVar8 = String.EMPTY;
myVar9 = String.EMPTY;

10 (11 including String.EMPTY) Pointers to 1 object

Or: -

myVar0 = "";
myVar1 = "";
myVar2 = "";
myVar3 = "";
myVar4 = "";
myVar5 = "";
myVar6 = "";
myVar7 = "";
myVar8 = "";
myVar9 = "";

10 pointers to 10 objects

This is inefficient and throughout a large application, can be significant.

Perhaps the Java compiler or run-time is efficient enough to automatically point all instances of "" to the same instance, but it might not and takes additional processing to make that determination.