I think they forgot something: String.valueOf( String.valueOf ( new StringBuffer(bla).append(bla2).append(bla3) .toString()).toString() ).toString()   @beltorak said:.....And speaking of needless object creation... I've seen this in some of the code where I work:String firstName = new String();firstName = getFirstName();String lastName = new String();firstName = getFirstName();...repeat about 20 times I worked with someone who used to parse Strings to ints like so: <FONT face="Courier New" size=2>int a = new Integer(aStr).intValue();</FONT> and convert them to Strings like this <FONT face="Courier New" size=2>String aStr = new Integer(a).toString();</FONT> and when I told him why this was bad practice, his argument was along the lines of using objects is more OO, whereas static methods aren't OO. Never could get around the 'logic' of that. At least not with a guy whose first language was VB.