I just wanted to chime in with an object oriented solution to the problem.
If you model domain objects, then the solution is in the domain objects. The domain here is a List of integers for which we want string values.
The easiest way would be to not convert the list at all.
That being said, in order to convert without converting, change the original list of Integer to List of Value, where Value looks something like this...
class Value {
Integer value;
public Integer getInt()
{
return value;
}
public String getString()
{
return String.valueOf(value);
}
}
This will be faster and take up less memory than copying the List.
Good Luck!