> Anything else other than the ability to reliably use == for String comparison instead of .equals()? Sometimes that's key. Why not use an int or some other t

> Anything else other than the ability to reliably use == for String comparison instead of .equals()? Sometimes that's key. Why not use an int or some other token? Well then you have to garbage collect yourself. Maybe use your own class for the token though instead of a string? But then you still have to do half the garbage collection, as you need a weak map for lookup and possibly some cleaning infrastructure.