string hash performance

[Jeff Sturm]

On Mon, 19 Aug 2002, Bryce McKinlay wrote:
> >I did some benchmarking with the cachedHashCode bits of your patch.
> >Interestingly, it helped considerably on my interpreter benchmarks,
> >chopping about 15% off total run time.
> >
>
> Thanks for benchmarking this. It looks like this is a clear win to me.
> Given that its also what the JDK appears to do, I think we should go
> ahead and change String to cache the hashCode.

Or just approve Eric's merge patch.  It probably needs updating though.

Jeff