Interning (computer science)

In computer science, interning is re-using objects of equal value on-demand instead of creating new objects. This creational pattern is frequently used for numbers and strings in different programming languages. In many object-oriented languages such as Python, even primitive types such as integer numbers are objects. To avoid the overhead of constructing a large number of integer objects, these objects get reused through interning.

For interning to work the interned objects must be immutable, since state is shared between multiple variables. String interning is a common application of interning, where many strings with identical values are needed in the same program.

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