String's Maximum length in Java - calling length() method

Question

Hi people.

My question is very basic, but I didn't find an answer on a Google search.

In Java, ¿what is the maximum size a String object may have, referring to the length() method call?

I know that length() return the size of a String as a char [ ]

Answer 1

Since arrays must be indexed with integers, the maximum length of an array is Integer.MAX_INT, or 2 147 483 647. This is assuming you have enough memory to hold an array of that size, of course.

Answer 2

Considering the String class' length method returns an int, the maximum length that would be returned by the method would be Integer.MAX_VALUE, which is 2^31 - 1.

In terms of lengths and indexing of arrays, (such as char[], which is probably the way the internal data representation is implemented for Strings), Chapter 10: Arrays of The Java Language Specification, Second Edition says the following:

The variables contained in an array have no names; instead they are referenced by array access expressions that use nonnegative integer index values. These variables are called the components of the array. If an array has n components, we say n is the length of the array; the components of the array are referenced using integer indices from 0 to n - 1, inclusive.

Furthermore, the indexing must be by int values, as mentioned in Section 10.4:

Arrays must be indexed by int values;

Therefore, it appears that the limit is indeed 2^31 - 1, as that is the maximum value for a nonnegative int value.

However, there probably are going to be other limitations, such as the maximum allocatable size for an array.

Answer 3

apparently it's bound to an int, which is 0x7FFFFFFF (2147483647).

Answer 4

all wrong, it's 65536