JavaSE All In One

StringBuffer versus String

Java provides the StringBuffer and String classes, and the String class is used to manipulate character strings that cannot be changed. Simply stated, objects of type String are read only and immutable. The StringBuffer class is used to represent characters that can be modified.
The significant performance difference between these two classes is that StringBuffer is faster than String when performing simple concatenations. In String manipulation code, character strings are routinely concatenated. Using the String class, concatenations are typically performed as follows:

String str = new String ("Stanford  ");
str += "Lost!!";

If you were to use StringBuffer to perform the same concatenation, you would need code that looks like this:

StringBuffer str = new StringBuffer ("Stanford ");
str.append("Lost!!");

Developers usually assume that the first example above is more efficient because they think that the second example, which uses the append method for concatenation, is more costly than the first example, which uses the + operator to concatenate two String objects.
The + operator appears innocent, but the code generated produces some surprises. Using a StringBuffer for concatenation can in fact produce code that is significantly faster than using a String.