When to use StringBuilder in Java [duplicate]

Answer 1

The problem with String concatenation is that it leads to copying of the String object with all the associated cost. StringBuilder is not threadsafe and is therefore faster than StringBuffer, which used to be the preferred choice before Java 5. As a rule of thumb, you should not do String concatenation in a loop, which will be called often. I guess doing a few concatenations here and there will not hurt you as long as you are not talking about hundreds and this of course depends on your performance requirements. If you are doing real time stuff, you should be very careful.

Answer 2

The + operator uses public String concat(String str) internally. This method copies the characters of the two strings, so it has memory requirements and runtime complexity proportional to the length of the two strings. StringBuilder works more efficent.

However I have read here that the concatination code using the + operater is changed to StringBuilder on post Java 4 compilers. So this might not be an issue at all. (Though I would really check this statement if I depend on it in my code!)

Answer 3

Ralph's answer is fabulous. I would rather use StringBuilder class to build/decorate the String because the usage of it is more look like Builder pattern.

public String decorateTheString(String orgStr){
            StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
            builder.append(orgStr);
            builder.deleteCharAt(orgStr.length()-1);
            builder.insert(0,builder.hashCode());
            return builder.toString();
}

It can be use as a helper/builder to build the String, not the String itself.