String interning
data structure for reusing strings
In computer science, string interning is a method of storing only one copy of each distinct string value, which must be immutable. Interning strings makes some string processing tasks more time-efficient or space-efficient at the cost of using more time when the string is created or interned. The distinct values are stored in a string intern pool.
The one copy of each string is called its intern and is typically looked up by a method of the string class, for example String.intern() in Java. All compile time constant strings in Java are automatically interned using this method.
String interning is supported by some modern object-oriented programming languages, including Java, Python, PHP (since 5.4), Lua
and .NET languages. Lisp, Scheme, Julia, Ruby and Smalltalk are among the languages with a symbol type that are basically interned strings. The library of the Standard ML of New Jersey contains an atom type that does the same thing. Objective-C selectors, which are mainly used as method names, are interned strings.
Objects other than strings can be interned.
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This entry incorporates text from “String interning” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.