Is making an empty string constant worth it?

Question

I have a co-worker that swears by

//in a singleton \"Constants\" class
public static final String EMPTY_STRING = \"\";

in a constants class

Answer 1

Hehe, funny thing is: Once it compiles, you wont see a difference (in the byte-code) between the "static final" thing and the string literal, as the Java-compiler always inlines "static final String" into the target class. Just change your empty string into something recognizable (like the LGPL-text) and look at the resulting *.class file of code that refernces that constant. You will find your text copied into that class-file.