Performance of java.nio.CharBuffer vs. java.lang.StringBuffer:

For "normal" string processing there appears to be no difference between the two -- the effects are lost in the noise. For large strings (documents and the like), CharBuffer has a distinct advantage.

CharBuffer has the perk of pointer-like manipulation via CharBuffer.subSequence() and CharBuffer.slice() but lacks good string searching functions like StringBuffer.lasIndexOf().

The only caveat with CharBuffer is that the size of the buffer must be known a priori.

Notes:

• The length of the strings added were between 0 and 10 characters in length to simulate standard text processing.
• This should be taken with a grain of salt since it is a micro-benchmark.