Checking for string contents? string Length Vs Empty String

Question

Which is more efficient for the compiler and the best practice for checking whether a string is blank?

1. Checking whether the length of the string == 0

Answer 1

In this case, directly checking the length is faster, because it avoids the overhead of constructing the new empty string.

@DerekPark: That's not always true. "" is a string literal so, in Java, it will almost certainly already be interned.