Is making an empty string constant worth it?

Question

I have a co-worker that swears by

//in a singleton \"Constants\" class
public static final String EMPTY_STRING = \"\";

in a constants class

Answer 1

As a tangent to the question, I generally recommend using a utility function when what you're really checking for is "no useful value" rather than, specifically, the empty string. In general, I tend to use:

import org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils;

// Check if a String is whitespace, empty ("") or null.
StringUtils.isBlank(mystr); 
// Check if a String is empty ("") or null.
StringUtils.isEmpty(mystr); 

The concept being that the above two:

• Check the various other cases, including being null safe, and (more importantly)
• Conveys what you are trying to test, rather than how to test it.