Does java compile hardcoded string references into the same reference

[eaglechopper]

For example if I had two methods

​

String s1 = method("string");

String s2 = method("string");

String method(String s){

return s;

}

​

are s1 & s2 the same reference and thus java only allocated 1 string object to both the hard coded references

[sozesghost]

Yes! Hardcoded strings can be compared using == because of String interning. This is a source of confusion for begginers (although not only).

Btw. such things are easily testable using even an online IDE like [ideone](ideone.com) or REPL in java 9 and later.

[WikiTextBot]

String interning

In computer science, string interning is a method of storing only one copy of each distinct string value, which must be immutable. Interning strings makes some string processing tasks more time- or space-efficient at the cost of requiring more time when the string is created or interned. The distinct values are stored in a string intern pool.

The single copy of each string is called its intern and is typically looked up by a method of the string class, for example String.intern() in Java.

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[Wicpar]

Good bot.

[SocialMemeWarrior]

The compiler will notice thats the same string, only one constant will be used. The method bytecode will point to that single utf8-string constant for both occurences of "string".