Difference between Long.valueOf(java.lang.String) and new Long(java.lang.String)?

Question

I\'m consolidating code written by two different people and notice that casting a String value into a Long has been done in two different ways.

Coder #1 has done t

Answer 1

The difference is that using new Long() you will always create a new object, while using Long.valueOf(), may return you the cached value of long if the value is between [-128 to 127].

So, you should prefer Long.valueOf method, because it may save you some memory.

If you see the source code for Long.valueOf(String), it internally invokes Long.valueOf(long), whose source code I have posted below: -

public static Long valueOf(String s) throws NumberFormatException
{
    return Long.valueOf(parseLong(s, 10));
}

public static Long valueOf(long l) {
    final int offset = 128;
    if (l >= -128 && l <= 127) { // will cache 
        return LongCache.cache[(int)l + offset];
    }
    return new Long(l);
}