Java string intern and literal

Question

Are the below two pieces of code the same?

String foo = "foo";
String foo = new String("foo").intern();

Answer 1

They have the same end result, but they are not the same (they'll produce different bytecode; the new String("foo").intern() version actually goes through those steps, producing a new string object, then interning it).

Two relevant quotes from String#intern:

When the intern method is invoked, if the pool already contains a string equal to this String object as determined by the equals(Object) method, then the string from the pool is returned. Otherwise, this String object is added to the pool and a reference to this String object is returned.

All literal strings and string-valued constant expressions are interned.

So the end result is the same: A variable referencing the interned string "foo".