performance - Can we avoid interning of strings in java?

Question

Can we completely disable interning of strings. It might not be really helpful, but just a thought. I can think atleast one point where it could be helpful i.e. during jvm tuning, controlling the size of the perm gen.

For e.g. if I give out an OSGI framework and anyone can add any number of bundles of their own and each bundles string interning can completely screw up my tuning parameters. (Ofcourse I know that we should do tuning on a given fixed distro, but still...)

Any thoughts!!

Answer 1

Permgen size/usage isn't an issue with modern JVMs. Interned strings are made available to the garbage collector when there are no remaining references to them.

(And no, you can't "turn off" interning of string literals).