Concatenating an empty string with another value is an inefficient way to convert that value to a string. This pattern creates unnecessary string
objects and obscures the developer’s intent.
In Groovy, when you use '' + someValue, the runtime must:
- Create a new empty string object
- Convert
someValue to a string representation
- Concatenate the empty string with the converted value
- Return the result
This approach is less efficient than direct string conversion methods and makes the code less readable. The intent (converting a value to a string)
is not immediately clear to other developers reading the code.
Moreover, this pattern can lead to unexpected behavior with null values, as '' + null results in the string "null" rather
than an empty string or a null pointer exception that might be more appropriate depending on the context.
