Maximum number of characters stringbuilder can accommodate

Question

I need to write 10,000 x 30,000 characters. will a single stringbuilder be able to acomodate all characters or should I think of an array of stringbuilders? I do not have access to the test cases, so I cannot actually verify it myself. Hope I will find the answer here.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT:

I tried to add 10000 x 30000 characters using a loop. I get the following exceptions.

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
at java.util.Arrays.copyOf(Arrays.java:2367)
at java.lang.AbstractStringBuilder.expandCapacity(AbstractStringBuilder.java:130)
at java.lang.AbstractStringBuilder.ensureCapacityInternal(AbstractStringBuilder.java:114)
at java.lang.AbstractStringBuilder.append(AbstractStringBuilder.java:415)
at java.lang.StringBuilder.append(StringBuilder.java:132)
at Test.main(Test.java:19)

What to do with this "java heap space"?

Answer 1

The length is an int so it should hold up to 2GChar (4GB) assuming you have the memory. You are going to use "only" 600MB (300 million @ 2 bytes per character). Just be careful how many copies you end up making... i.e. toString().

Answer 2

What you need to worry about is the max heap size. It is not going to make any difference whether you use single or multiple StringBuilder objects.