Great research here!

I don't have a dog in this fight (haven't touched anything Java-y since 2019), but I sure would love it if compilers would just optimize this kind of thing better for me in the first place. String operations is something that is super common and if there can be small efficiency improvements, they can add up fast! But at the same time, asking developers to worried about One More Thing is a bit absurd.

J.Ja