JVM -XX:+StringCache argument?

Question

I was recently reading about all the JVM arguments available in JRE 6 [Java VM Options] and saw this :

-XX:+StringCache : Enables caching of commonly

Answer 1

I also have not been able to find a JVM which respects this setting; as commented the quality and thus usefulness of the documentation around JVM parameters is terrible, and yet for some reason seems to be an area where JVM vendors see room for competitive differentiation - although to be fair Oracle/Sun is by far the worst.

Anyhow if you find that your app in some particular area uses a small number of string values repeatedly then it is definitely sensible to use interning - by using the String.intern() method to return an intern-pool value. Note that you have to use the return value, this is not a side-effect on the original value.

As with all profiling/performance tweaks this needs to be done carefully with metrics and testing. It can be significant (has been for me) but if the pool of values is not small it degrades performance and you need to be aware that the pool of String values is held in the Perm Gen and so using it will affect memory usage, GC etc.