Question

Possible Duplicate:
difference between string object and string literal

When initializing a String object there are at least two ways, like such:

String s = "some string";
String s = new String("some string");

What’s the difference?

Answer 1

The Java language has special handling for strings; a string literal automatically becomes a String object.

So in the first case, you’re initializing the reference s to that String object.

In the second case, you’re creating a new String object, passing in a reference to the original String object as a constructor parameter. In other words, you’re creating a copy. The reference s is then initialized to refer to that copy.