The key thing to remember about Java strings is that they are immutable objects representing text as a sequence of Unicode characters (letters, digits, punctuation, etc.). Double quotes are used to define a String instance:

String fruit = "Apple";

Manipulating a string can be done using method of class String. As string values can never change after having been defined, all string manipulation methods will return a new string.

A string is delimited by double quote (") characters. Some special characters need escaping using the backslash (\) character. Characters to be escaped in Java:

• "
• \

String escaped = "c:\\test.txt";
// => c:\test.txt

Finally, there are many ways to concatenate a string. The simplest one is the + operator

String name = "Jane";
"Hello " + name + "!";
// => "Hello Jane!"

For any string formatting more complex than simple concatenation, String.format method is preferred.

String name = "Jane";
String.format("Hello %s!",name);
// => "Hello Jane!"

Other possibilities are:

• use StringBuilder class
• use String.concat method