How to deal with Final Strings?

Question

Is there any advantage of making String as final or can we make String as final ?, my understanding is that as String is immutable, there is no point of making it final, is this correct or they are situation where one would want to make String as Final ?

Code:

private final String a = "test";

or 

private String b = "test";

Answer 1

final means that the reference can never change. String immutability means something different; it means when a String is created (value, not reference, i.e: "text"), it can't be changed.

For example:

String x = "Strings Are ";
String s = x;

Now s and x both reference the same String. However:

x += " Immutable Objects!";
System.out.println("x = " + x);
System.out.println("s = " + s);

This will print:

x = Strings Are Immutable Objects
s = Strings Are

This proves that any String created cannot be changed, and when any change does happen, a new String gets created.

Now, for final, if we declare x as final and try to change its value, we'll get an exception:

final String x = "Strings Are ";
x += " Immutable Objects!";

Here is the exception:

java.lang.RuntimeException: Uncompilable source code - cannot assign a value to final variable x

Answer 2

It means that that variable can never even point to a different string.

(And yes, a String object is immutable... but a variable could point to a different instance of String. Unless it's final.)

(edit -- in your example, you didnt name your variable...

final String x = "test";

)