Does an unused import declaration eat memory, in Java?

Question

Does an unused import like so - import android.widget.RelativeLayout; eat memory? Just want to know about how much or just is it valuable? Maybe this is stupid question, but I haven't found answer.

Answer 1

No they don't take any memory. Imports are just used by compiler to resolve class names at compile time.

Compiler changes each class name to fully qualified name. And removes the import statement. So, the import statement doesn't make it to byte code.

The only issue that can come up with wildcard import is namespace conflict, ie, when two types with the same name is defined in two different packages, then importing those packages with wildcards will cause name conflict for that type used.

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To see how compiler replaces the import statement, you can generate the byte code of your class using javap command. Consider the below code:

import java.util.*;
import java.util.regex.*;

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {

    }
}

Just compile the above code, and check the byte code using the following command:

javap Test

It gives out following output:

public class Test {
  public Test();
  public static void main(java.lang.String[]);
}

So, you can see that String type is replaced with it's fully qualified name java.lang.String , and there is no import statement in byte code.

Answer 2

No, compiler removes them after compilation. But two issue you may face

1. code clutter
2. If you import some classes from jar and later removed jar but not imports, then you may get compile time error

Answer 3

No impact at runtime. It can make the compiling process a very tiny bit (unmeasurable) slower. But as far as having them, it's better to remove them because it makes the files smaller and it makes it easier to read what imports are actually being used.

Answer 4

Unused imports do not have a impact at runtime (because there are no imports in the byte code). However, unused imports will affect the compiler, but not by much.

In general, importing only what you need will lead to improved maintainability and readability of code.

Answer 5

No impact any rumtime-compiler time ,

but best approach is to write the clearest and simplest code you can as this improves the maintainability of the code and helps ensure it performs reasonably well even after it is changed.

Documentation: Best Practices for Performance