A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
Byte.valueOf(byte) notes
     * If a new <tt>Byte</tt> instance is not required, this method
     * should generally be used in preference to the constructor
     * {@link #Byte(byte)}, as this method is likely to yield
     * significantly better space and time performance by caching
     * frequently requested values.

Please provide a version of valueOf which takes a String and does the same thing. This also holds for Short, Integer and Long.

JUSTIFICATION :
If it is a good idea for converting byte to Byte it should also be a good idea from converting String to Byte.
I understand there may be backward compatibility issues but there should be an elegant way to resolve this.

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
valueOf(String) behaves in the same way as valueOf(byte)
ACTUAL -
valueOf(String) does the same as new Byte(String)
valueOf(byte) notes that using the cache has many benifits.

---------- BEGIN SOURCE ----------
public static Byte valueOf(String s, int radix) throws NumberFormatException {
return valueOf(parseByte(s, radix));
    }
---------- END SOURCE ----------

CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
Call Byte.valueOf(Byte.parseByte(String))
This is tricky to do with reflections in an elegant way!