Performance benefits of a static empty array instance

Question

It seems common practice to extract a constant empty array return value into a static constant. Like here:

public class NoopParser implements Parser {
    pr         


        

Answer 1

I will go out on a limb and say that the performance benefit, even though using constant is much faster, is not actually relevant; because the software will likely spend a lot more time in doing other things besides returning empty arrays. If the total run-time is even hours a few extra seconds spent in creating an array does not mean much. By the same logic, memory consumption is not relevant either.

The only reason I can think of for doing this is readability.