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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-17T18:27:38+00:00

I have a getter that returns a String and I am comparing it to

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I have a getter that returns a String and I am comparing it to some other String. I check the returned value for null so my ifstatement looks like this (and I really do exit early if it is true)

if (someObject.getFoo() != null && someObject.getFoo().equals(someOtherString)) {
  return;
}

Performancewise, would it be better to store the returned String rather than calling the getter twice like this? Does it even matter?

String foo = someObject.getFoo();
if (foo != null && foo.equals(someOtherString)) {
  return;
}

To answer questions from the comments, this check is not performed very often and the getter is fairly simple. I am mostly curious how allocating a new local variable compares to executing the getter an additional time.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It depends entirely on what the getter does. If it’s a simple getter (retrieving a data member), then the JVM will be able to inline it on-the-fly if it determines that code is a hot spot for performance. This is actually why Oracle/Sun’s JVM is called “HotSpot”. 🙂 It will apply aggressive JIT optimization where it sees that it needs it (when it can). If the getter does something complex, though, naturally it could be slower to use it and have it repeat that work.

    If the code isn’t a hot spot, of course, you don’t care whether there’s a difference in performance.

    Someone once told me that the inlined getter can sometimes be faster than the value cached to a local variable, but I’ve never proven that to myself and don’t know the theory behind why it would be the case.

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