Slowness of JDK 1.1.x String.intern() [was Re: SAX, Java, and Namespaces ]

[Tim Bray]

At 10:12 AM 2/5/99 -0800, Jeff Greif wrote:
>JDK 1.1.7 intern is native, but is slow because it first converts the
>characters in the string 

Actually, the real reason that most XML parsers will *never* use
built-in intern is because they probably have the name available in a
character array, and can go look things up in the handcrafted
table without String-i-fying it - thus skipping several steps
of work that a built-in intern is going to have to do.  E.g. Lark's
symbol table is a double array, storing both the character-array
and String version of each name - you lookup based on the
character array and return the string if it's already there.  The
point is that you call new String() only once per unique name. 

 -Tim

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