For performance reasons, the use of += (String concatenation) is discouraged. The reason why is: Java String is an immutable, every time a new concatenation is done a new String is created (the new one has a different fingerprint from the older one already in the String pool ). Creating new strings puts pressure on the GC and slows down the program: object creation is expensive.
Below code should make it more practical and clear at the same time.
public static void main(String[] args)
{
// warming up
for(int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
RandomStringUtils.randomAlphanumeric(1024);
final StringBuilder appender = new StringBuilder();
for(int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
appender.append(RandomStringUtils.randomAlphanumeric(i));
// testing
for(int i = 1; i <= 10000; i*=10)
test(i);
}
public static void test(final int howMany)
{
List<String> samples = new ArrayList<>(howMany);
for(int i = 0; i < howMany; i++)
samples.add(RandomStringUtils.randomAlphabetic(128));
final StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
long start = System.nanoTime();
for(String sample: samples)
builder.append(sample);
builder.toString();
long elapsed = System.nanoTime() - start;
System.out.printf("builder - %d - elapsed: %dus\n", howMany, elapsed / 1000);
String accumulator = "";
start = System.nanoTime();
for(String sample: samples)
accumulator += sample;
elapsed = System.nanoTime() - start;
System.out.printf("concatenation - %d - elapsed: %dus\n", howMany, elapsed / (int) 1e3);
start = System.nanoTime();
String newOne = null;
for(String sample: samples)
newOne = new String(sample);
elapsed = System.nanoTime() - start;
System.out.printf("creation - %d - elapsed: %dus\n\n", howMany, elapsed / 1000);
}
Results for a run are reported below.
builder - 1 - elapsed: 132us
concatenation - 1 - elapsed: 4us
creation - 1 - elapsed: 5us
builder - 10 - elapsed: 9us
concatenation - 10 - elapsed: 26us
creation - 10 - elapsed: 5us
builder - 100 - elapsed: 77us
concatenation - 100 - elapsed: 1669us
creation - 100 - elapsed: 43us
builder - 1000 - elapsed: 511us
concatenation - 1000 - elapsed: 111504us
creation - 1000 - elapsed: 282us
builder - 10000 - elapsed: 3364us
concatenation - 10000 - elapsed: 5709793us
creation - 10000 - elapsed: 972us
Not considering the results for 1 concatenation (JIT was not yet doing its job), even for 10 concatenations the performance penalty is relevant; for thousands of concatenations, the difference is huge.
Lessons learned from this very quick experiment (easily reproducible with the above code): never use the += to concatenate strings together, even in very basic cases where a few concatenations are needed (as said, creating new strings is expensive anyway and puts pressure on the GC).
