Why String has been made immutable in Java?

Why String has been made immutable in Java?

Though, performance is also a reason (assuming you are already aware of the internal String pool maintained for making sure that the same String object is used more than once without having to create/re-claim it those many times), but the main reason why String has been made immutable in Java is 'Security'. Surprised? Let's understand why.

Suppose you need to open a secure file which requires the users to authenticate themselves. Let's say there are two users named 'user1' and 'user2' and they have their own password files 'password1' and 'password2', respectively. Obviously 'user2' should not have access to 'password1' file.

As we know the filenames in Java are specified by using Strings. Even if you create a 'File' object, you pass the name of the file as a String only and that String is maintained inside the File object as one of its members.

Had String been mutable, 'user1' could have logged into using his credentials and then somehow could have managed to change the name of his password filename (a String object) from 'password1' to 'password2' before JVM actually places the native OS system call to open the file. This would have allowed 'user1' to open user2's password file. Understandably it would have resulted into a big security flaw in Java. I understand there are so many 'could have's here, but you would certainly agree that it would have opened a door to allow developers messing up the security of many resources either intentionally or un-intentionally.

With Strings being immutable, JVM can be sure that the filename instance member of the corresponding File object would keep pointing to same unchanged "filename" String object. The 'filename' instance member being a 'final' in the File class can anyway not be modified to point to any other String object specifying any other file than the intended one (i.e., the one which was used to create the File object).

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