Why getText() in JPasswordField was deprecated?
java, jpasswordfield, swing
Solution
When calling `getText` you get a String (immutable object) that may not be changed (except reflection) and so the password stays in the memory until garbage collected.
When calling `getPassword` you get a char array that may be modified, so the password will really not stay in memory.
Problem
I never thought before, only I used the method `getPassword` that returning an array of characters and I had seen the `getText` method was deprecated. But now that I think, why this method was deprecated?. The Java documentation explains: Deprecated. As of Java 2 platform v1.2, replaced by `getPassword`. Fetches a portion of the text represented by the component. Returns an empty string if length is 0. For security reasons, this method is deprecated. Use the `getPassword` method instead. But what are those security reasons? Any ideas about this? Thank you in advance.