I have been making more use of CharSequence in text processing to avoid unnecessary generating Strings. A trivial example is. public CharSequence cut(CharSequence str, int len) { if (str.length <= len) return; StringBuilder ret = new StringBuilder(len); ret.append(str.subSequence(0, len-3)); ret.append("..."); return ret; } This result can be used in a StringBuilder, or be passed to a method which requires a String. e.g. public void setDescription(String description) { ... } setDescription(cut(longDescription, MAX_LENGTH)); One of the options is to cast to String. setDescription((String) cut(longDescription, MAX_LENGTH)); This may work some of the time, but a better, possiblily more reliable suggestion is call toString() setDescription(cut(longDescription, MAX_LENGTH).toString()); I believe calling toString() may be a better way convert in a wide range of situations.