Java - Arrays
Categories: Java 8(JDK1.8)
Java provides a data structure, the array, which stores a fixed-size sequential collection of elements of the same type. An array is used to store a collection of data, but it is often more useful to think of an array as a collection of variables of the same type.
Instead of declaring individual variables, such as number0, number1, ..., and number99, you declare one array variable such as numbers and use numbers[0], numbers[1], and ..., numbers[99] to represent individual variables.
This tutorial introduces how to declare array variables, create arrays, and process arrays using indexed variables.
Declaring Array Variables
To use an array in a program, you must declare a variable to reference the array, and you must specify the type of array the variable can reference. Here is the syntax for declaring an array variable −
Syntax
dataType[] arrayRefVar; // preferred way.
or
dataType arrayRefVar[]; // works but not preferred way.
Note − The style dataType[] arrayRefVar is preferred. The style dataType arrayRefVar[] comes from the C/C++ language and was adopted in Java to accommodate C/C++ programmers.
Example
The following code snippets are examples of this syntax −
double[] myList; // preferred way.
or
double myList[]; // works but not preferred way