Java multiline string

Question

Coming from Perl, I sure am missing the \"here-document\" means of creating a multi-line string in source code:

$string = <<\"EOF\"  # create a three-l         


        

Answer 1

Pluses are converted to StringBuilder.append, except when both strings are constants so the compiler can combine them at compile time. At least, that's how it is in Sun's compiler, and I would suspect most if not all other compilers would do the same.

So:

String a="Hello";
String b="Goodbye";
String c=a+b;

normally generates exactly the same code as:

String a="Hello";
String b="Goodbye":
StringBuilder temp=new StringBuilder();
temp.append(a).append(b);
String c=temp.toString();

On the other hand:

String c="Hello"+"Goodbye";

is the same as:

String c="HelloGoodbye";

That is, there's no penalty in breaking your string literals across multiple lines with plus signs for readability.