Exact difference between CharSequence and String in java

Question

I read this previous post. Can any one say what the exact difference between CharSequence and String is, other than the fact that String implements CharSequence and that String is a sequence of character? For example:

CharSequence obj = "hello";
String str = "hello";
System.out.println("output is : " + obj + "  " + str);

What happens when "hello" is assigned to obj and again to str ?

Answer 1

General differences

There are several classes which implement the CharSequence interface besides String. Among these are

• StringBuilder for variable-length character sequences which can be modified
• CharBuffer for fixed-length low-level character sequences which can be modified

Any method which accepts a CharSequence can operate on all of these equally well. Any method which only accepts a String will require conversion. So using CharSequence as an argument type in all the places where you don't care about the internals is prudent. However you should use String as a return type if you actually return a String, because that avoids possible conversions of returned values if the calling method actually does require a String.

Also note that maps should use String as key type, not CharSequence, as map keys must not change. In other words, sometimes the immutable nature of String is essential.

Specific code snippet

As for the code you pasted: simply compile that, and have a look at the JVM bytecode using javap -v. There you will notice that both obj and str are references to the same constant object. As a String is immutable, this kind of sharing is all right.

The + operator of String is compiled as invocations of various StringBuilder.append calls. So it is equivalent to

System.out.println(
  (new StringBuilder())
  .append("output is : ")
  .append((Object)obj)
  .append(" ")
  .append(str)
  .toString()
)

I must confess I'm a bit surprised that my compiler javac 1.6.0_33 compiles the + obj using StringBuilder.append(Object) instead of StringBuilder.append(CharSequence). The former probably involves a call to the toString() method of the object, whereas the latter should be possible in a more efficient way. On the other hand, String.toString() simply returns the String itself, so there is little penalty there. So StringBuilder.append(String) might be more efficient by about one method invocation.