java偏移量,为什么Java String实现中存在偏移量？

I've been looking at the implementation and I don't understand why there is an offset. I assume it is important.

I'm taking an Algorithms course taught by Sedgewick, and we're talking about Strings now. In lecture he briefly discussed the String implementation, but he doesn't go over why there is an offset (Note, if lectures were not online, I would definitely have asked).

It seems when one makes a String that within the implementation, it is given an offset, and I can't seem to understand why one is needed. Even for substring purposes I don't quite follow why you would have an offset. For example, apparently if you create a string "David", it is really ['X', 'X', 'D', 'a', 'v', 'i', 'd', 'X'], or something of that nature, where it is offset by the 'X's. Why is this?

解决方案

This can be useful in cases where strings need to be derived from another longer string, akin to substring().

In this case the same (immutable) backing array may be used, while adjusting the offset and length, to save memory and optimize performance.

This is no longer the case in JDK7.