I originally was writing a question as to how throwing away string objects in Java was handled, and whether or not the 4 unused strings out of the 5 created were destroyed, but then I tripped over this line in the J2SE 1.4 API docs: "The Java language provides special support for the string concatentation operator ( + ), and for conversion of other objects to strings. String concatenation is implemented through the StringBuffer class and its append method. String conversions are implemented through the method toString, defined by Object and inherited by all classes in Java." I did some digging on java.sun.com, and that line is verbatim in every API dating back to JDK v1.1. So it appears as though a println() call using the + operator looks like this:

System.out.println(((new StringBuffer("I am'")).append(me.toString()))
+.toString());
[download]

to the compiler (the last toString() because a PrintStream doesn't have a println() method that takes a StringBuffer). I was taught even in my first CS class (we learned Java) that strings worked the way you said, and I was under that assumption until about five minutes ago. Perhaps I am wrong, but in my reading of the docs it appears that Java handles string concatentation with the + operator as you suggested he try manually.

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