StringBuilder / StringBuffer with literal string in memory [duplicate]

Question

example code:

StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("hi");
sb = null;

Question:

will the literal string "hi" somehow stay in memory, even after the StringBuffer has been garbage collected? Or is it just used to create a char array for the StringBuffer and then never put anywhere in memory?

Answer 1

Yes, hi is a compile time constant so it gets interned by the compiler and resides in the string pool.

Moreover G1GC can perform String deduplication as part of JEP 192: String Deduplication in G1 in which case even if hi wasn't interned by javac it might be retained as part of the deduplication.

Answer 2

A string literal always refers to the same instance of class String. This is because string literals - or, more generally, strings that are the values of constant expressions (§15.28) - are "interned" so as to share unique instances, using the method String.intern.

^{JLS 11 > 3. Lexical Structure > 3.10.5. String Literals}