String的Intern方法探析

定义

首先看下String的Intern方法的API定义

 /**
     * Returns a canonical representation for the string object.
     * <p>
     * A pool of strings, initially empty, is maintained privately by the
     * class {@code String}.
     * <p>
     * When the intern method is invoked, if the pool already contains a
     * string equal to this {@code String} object as determined by
     * the {@link #equals(Object)} method, then the string from the pool is
     * returned. Otherwise, this {@code String} object is added to the
     * pool and a reference to this {@code String} object is returned.
     * <p>
     * It follows that for any two strings {@code s} and {@code t},
     * {@code s.intern() == t.intern()} is {@code true}
     * if and only if {@code s.equals(t)} is {@code true}.
     * <p>
     * All literal strings and string-valued constant expressions are
     * interned. String literals are defined in section 3.10.5 of the
     * <cite>The Java&trade; Language Specification</cite>.
     *
     * @return  a string that has the same contents as this string, but is
     *          guaranteed to be from a pool of unique strings.
     */
    public native String intern();

简单翻译过来就是：
当intern方法被调用时，如果字符串池里已经包含一个相同的字符串对象（使用equals方法判定），那么将返回字符串池中的那个字符串对象，反之，将把这个字符串放入池中，并返回。

可以通过一些简单的例子学习

package com.huyi.jvm;

/**
 * Created with IntelliJ IDEA.
 *
 * @Author: huyi
 * @Date: 2017/11/18 11:04
 */
public class StringIntern {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String a = new String("ab");
        String b = new String("ab");
        String c = "ab";
        String d = "a" + "b";
        String e = "b";
        String f = "a" + e;

        System.out.println(b.intern() == a);//false
        System.out.println(b.intern() == c);//true
        System.out.println(b.intern() == d);//true
        System.out.println(b.intern() == f);//false
        System.out.println(b.intern() == a.intern());//true
        System.out.println(f.intern() == a.intern());//true
    }
}

来分析下这个结果：

1. b.intern() == a ，首先a,b对象都是字符串对象，b.intern()返回的是字符串池的“ab”,"ab" == a 返回的肯定是false
2. b.intern() == c ，b.intern()返回的是字符串池的“ab”,"ab" == c,c 也是字符串常量“ab”，这里要说明的是对于字符串常量的比较 "abc" == ("a"+"bc") == ("ab"+"c"),==符号比较的是jvm虚拟机堆中的地址
3. b.intern() == d，原理和2相同，都是字符常量的比较
4. b.intern() == f，这里为什么是false呢，b.intern()返回的是字符串池的“ab”，而f是字符串对象，两者的地址不一致，所以为false
5. b.intern() == a.intern()，字符常量的比较，所以为true
6. f.intern() == a.intern()，字符常量的比较，所以为true

所以这里总结下：

1. String.intern()方法返回的是一个字符串常量，这个常量如果已经在字符串池中存在，则直接返回，反之则保存后返回。
2. String的 == 符号比较的是jvm虚拟机堆中的地址

参考：

https://www.cnblogs.com/wanlipeng/archive/2010/10/21/1857513.html
http://blog.csdn.net/chaofanwei/article/details/19486919