String.join() vs other string concatenation operations

Question

I have quickly read over the Java8 String api documentation.

Now I am little curious about String.join() method to concat/join strings.

This kind of example has helped me to understand better, though:

//Old way:
String str1 = "John";
String str2 = "Doe";
String result = str1 + " " +str2;
//or by using str1.concat(str2);

//New way:
String result = String.join(" ", str1, str2);

Still, I don't understand which one should I use. Is there any performance or other differences between these two processes.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

String.join relies on the class StringJoiner which itself relies on an internal StringBuilder to build the joined string.

So performance-wise it's much the same as using a StringBuilder and appending to it, or using a chain of + (which nowadays are converted to StringBuilder operations by the compiler).

But the significance of String.join is not as a general replacement for + or String.concat, but in being the "reverse operation" of a String.split operation. It makes more sense in that context - when you have a bunch of strings that you want to join together using a delimiter - than as a replacement for concat.

That is, to build an output like "a/b/c/d" or "(a+b+c+d)" when you have a,b,c and d in an array or a list, String.join or a StringJoiner would make the operation clear and readable.

Answer 2

str1 + " " + str2 is internally converted into:

StringBuffer tmp1 = new StringBuffer();
tmp1.append(str1);
tmp1.append(" ");
String tmp2 = tmp1.toString();
StringBuffer tmp3 = new StringBuffer();
tmp3.append(tmp2);
tmp3.append(str2);
String result = tmp3.toString();

str1.concat(str2) will not produce the same result, as the space wont be present between the two strings.

join should be equivalent to

StringBuffer tmp1 = new StringBuffer();
tmp1.append(str1);
tmp1.append(" ");
tmp1.append(str2);
String result = tmp.toString();

and hence be faster.