Strings are immutable - that means I should never use += and only StringBuffer?

Question

Strings are immutable, meaning, once they have been created they cannot be changed.

So, does this mean that it would take more memory if you append things with += th

Answer 1

I agree with all the answers posted above, but it will help you a little bit to understand more about the way Java is implemented. The JVM uses StringBuffers internally to compile the String + operator (From the StringBuffer Javadoc):

String buffers are used by the compiler to implement the binary string concatenation operator +. For example, the code:

     x = "a" + 4 + "c"

is compiled to the equivalent of:

     x = new StringBuffer().append("a").append(4).append("c")
                           .toString()

Likewise, x += "some new string" is equivalent to x = x + "some new string". Do you see where I'm going with this?

If you are doing a lot of String concatenations, using StringBuffer will increase your performance, but if you're only doing a couple of simple String concatenations, the Java compiler will probably optimize it for you, and you won't notice a difference in performance