A Boolean wrapped with string

What's the best way to convert a Boolean primitive to a string?

By Tony Sintes, JavaWorld.com, 11/07/01

November 9, 2001

What's the best way to convert a Boolean primitive to a string? Would the following work?

boolean bool = true;
String s = new Boolean(bool).toString();
s.equals("true");

Yes, your proposed code will work. However, I'm not sure I would characterize it as "the best way to convert a Boolean into a string" as your solution creates an unnecessary extra object. You should avoid extraneous object creation because it can slow your program down and waste memory.

Instead, take a look at the String class. In particular, consider valueOf(boolean b) -- a static method that takes a Boolean as argument and returns a string representation. So, to convert your bool variable, you can simply do the following:

String s = String.valueOf( bool );

If you're new to Java (or whenever there is a new release), take a careful look at the JDK -- you'll find it offers many hidden treasures.

For example, you will rarely need to actually instantiate Booleans yourself since the Boolean class declares two static Boolean constants: TRUE and FALSE. So whenever you need a Boolean instance, you can just do the following:

Boolean.TRUE

or

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Boolean.FALSE