Chapter 6

Arrays and ArrayLists

Java How to Program,
Late Objects Version, 10/e

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6.1 Introduction
 Data structures—collections of related data items.
 Array objects—data structures consisting of related data
items of the same type.
◦ Make it convenient to process related groups of values.
◦ Remain the same length once they’re created.
 Enhanced for statement—allows a program to access the
data in an array more easily than does the counter-controlled
for statement.
 Use variable-length argument lists to create methods that can
be called with varying numbers of arguments.
 Demonstrate how to process command-line arguments in
method main.
 static methods of class Arrays from the java.util
package.

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6.1 Introduction (cont.)
 At the end of this chapter, we introduce one of Java’s
prebuilt data structures from the Java API’s collection
classes.
◦ Greater capabilities than traditional arrays.
◦ Reusable, reliable, powerful and efficient.
◦ Focus on the ArrayList collection.
 ArrayLists are similar to arrays but provide additional
functionality, such as dynamic resizing as necessary to
accommodate more or fewer elements.
 After reading Chapter 17, Lambdas and Streams, you’ll be
able to reimplement many of Chapter 6’s examples in a
more concise and elegant manner, and in a way that makes
them easier to parallelize to improve performance on
today’s multi-core systems.

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6.2 Primitive Types vs. Reference Types
 Java’s types are divided into primitive types and
reference types.
◦ Primitive types: boolean, byte, char, short, int, long,
float and double.
 All nonprimitive types are reference types.

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6.2 Primitive Types vs. Reference Types
(cont.)
 A primitive-type variable can hold exactly one value of its
declared type at a time.
 Programs use variables of reference types (normally
called references) to store the addresses of objects in the
computer’s memory.
◦ Such a variable is said to refer to an object in the program.
 To call an object’s methods, you need a reference to the
object.
 If an object’s method requires additional data to perform
its task, then you’d pass arguments in the method call.
 Primitive-type variables do not refer to objects, so such
variables cannot be used to invoke methods.

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6.3 Arrays
 An array is a group of variables (called elements or
components) containing values that all have the same
type.
 Arrays are objects, so they’re considered reference types.
 Elements can be either primitive types or reference types.
 To refer to a particular element in an array, we specify
the name of the reference to the array and the position
number of the element in the array.
◦ The position number of the element is called the element’s index
or subscript.

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6.3 Arrays (cont.)
 A program refers to an array’s elements with an array-access
expression
◦ The name of the array followed by the index of the particular
element in square brackets ([]).
 The first element in every array has index zero and is
sometimes called the zeroth element.
 The highest index in an array is one less than the number of
elements.
 Array names follow the same conventions as other variable
names.
 An index must be a nonnegative integer.
 A program can use an expression as an index.
 Array-access expressions can be used on the left side of an
assignment to place a new value into an array element.

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6.3 Arrays (cont.)
 Every array object knows its own length and stores
it in a length instance variable.
 Even though the length instance variable of an

array is public, it cannot be changed because it’s a

final variable.

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6.4 Declaring and Creating Arrays
 Like other objects, arrays are created with keyword
new.
 To create an array object, you specify the type of the
array elements and the number of elements as part of
an array-creation expression that uses keyword new.
◦ Returns a reference that can be stored in an array
variable.
 The following declaration and array-creation
expression create an array object containing 12 int
elements and store the array’s reference in the array
variable named c:
 int[] c = new int[12];
 The square brackets following the type indicate that
the variable will refer to an array.
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6.4 Declaring and Creating Arrays (cont.)
 A program can declare arrays of any type.
 Every element of a primitive-type array contains a

value of the array’s declared element type.

 Similarly, in an array of a reference type, every

element is a reference to an object of the array’s

declared element type.

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6.5 Examples Using Arrays
 This section presents several examples that
demonstrate declaring arrays, creating arrays,
initializing arrays and manipulating array elements.

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6.5.1 Creating and Initializing an Array
 The application of Fig. 6.2 uses keyword new to
create an array of 10 int elements, which are
initially zero (the default initial value for int
variables).

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6.5.2 Using an Array Initializer
 You can create an array and initialize its elements with an
array initializer—a comma-separated list of expressions
(called an initializer list) enclosed in braces.
 Tthe array length is determined by the number of elements in
the initializer list.
 The following statement creates a five-element array with
index values 0–4
int[] n = { 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 };
 Element n[0] is initialized to 10, n[1] is initialized to 20, and
so on.
 When the compiler encounters an array declaration that
includes an initializer list, it counts the number of initializers
in the list to determine the size of the array, then sets up the
appropriate new operation “behind the scenes.”

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6.5.3 Calculating the Values to Store in an
Array
 The application in Fig. 6.4 creates a 10-element
array and assigns to each element one of the even
integers from 2 to 20 (2, 4, 6, …, 20).
 Modifier final indicates that a variable is a
constant.
 Constant variables must be initialized before
they’re used and cannot be modified thereafter.
 If you attempt to modify a final variable after it’s
initialized in its declaration, the compiler issues an
error message like
 cannot assign a value to final variable variableName

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6.5.4 Summing the Elements of an Array
 Often, the elements of an array represent a series of
values to be used in a calculation.
 Figure 6.5 sums the values contained in a 10-

element integer array.

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6.5.5 Using Bar Charts to Display Array
Data Graphically
 Many programs present data to users in a graphical
manner.
 For example, numeric values are often displayed as

bars in a bar chart.

 In such a chart, longer bars represent proportionally

larger numeric values.

 One simple way to display numeric data graphically

is with a bar chart that shows each numeric value as

a bar of asterisks (*).

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6.5.6 Using the Elements of an Array as
Counters
 Sometimes, programs use counter variables to
summarize data, such as the results of a survey.
 In Fig. 5.7, we used separate counters in our die-rolling
program to track the number of occurrences of each side
of a six-sided die as the program rolled the die 6,000,000
times.
 An array version of this application is shown in Fig. 6.7.
 Figure 6.7 uses the array frequency to count the
occurrences of each side of the die.
 The single statement in line 12 of this program replaces
the entire switch statement of Fig. 5.7.

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6.5.7 Using Arrays to Analyze Survey
Results
 Our next example uses arrays to summarize data collected
in a survey:
◦ Twenty students were asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 5
the quality of the food in the student cafeteria, with 1
being “awful” and 5 being “excellent.” Place the 20
responses in an integer array and determine the
frequency of each rating.
 Typical array-processing application (Fig. 6.8).
 Summarize the number of responses of each type (that is,
1 through 5).
 Array responses is a 20-element integer array containing
the students’ survey responses.

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6.5.7 Using Arrays to Analyze Survey
Results (Cont.)
 The last value in the array is intentionally an
incorrect response (14).
 When a Java program executes, array element
indices are checked for validity—all indices must
be greater than or equal to 0 and less than the
length of the array.
 Any attempt to access an element outside that
range of indices results in a runtime error that’s
known as an
ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException.
 We use the six-element array frequency to count
the number of occurrences of each response.

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6.5.7 Using Arrays to Analyze Survey
Results (Cont.)
 The for statement reads the responses from the
responses one at a time and increments one of the
counters frequency[1] to frequency[5]; we
ignore frequency[0] because the survey
responses are limited to the range 1–5.
 The key statement in the loop appears in the try

block.
 This statement increments the appropriate

frequency counter as determined by the value of

responses[answer].

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6.6 Exception Handling: Processing the
Incorrect Response
 An exception indicates a problem that occurs while a
program executes.
 Exception handling helps you create fault-tolerant
programs that can resolve (or handle) exceptions.
 In many cases, this allows a program to continue executing
as if no problems were encountered.
 More severe problems might prevent a program from
continuing normal execution, instead requiring the
program to notify the user of the problem, then terminate.
 When the JVM or a method detects a problem, such as an
invalid array index or an invalid method argument, it
throws an exception—that is, an exception occurs.
 Methods in your own classes can also throw exceptions, as
you’ll learn in Chapter 8.

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6.6.1 The try Statement
 To handle an exception, place any code that might
throw an exception in a try statement.
 The try block contains the code that might throw
an exception, and the catch block contains the
code that handles the exception if one occurs.
 You can have many catch blocks to handle different
types of exceptions that might be thrown in the
corresponding try block.
 The braces that delimit the bodies of the try and
catch blocks are required.

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6.6.2 Executing the catch Block
 When the program encounters the invalid value 14 in
the responses array, it attempts to add 1 to
frequency[14], which is outside the bounds of the
array—the frequency array has only six elements
(with indexes 0–5).
 Because array bounds checking is performed at
execution time, the JVM generates an exception—
specifically an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException
to notify the program of this problem.
 At this point the try block terminates and the catch
block begins executing—any local variables declared
in the try block are now out of scope (and no longer
exist), so they’re not accessible in the catch block.

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6.6.3 toString Method of the Exception
Parameter
 When the exception is caught, the program displays a
message indicating the problem that occurred.
 We implicitly call the exception object’s toString
method to get the error message that’s implicitly
stored in the exception object and display it.
 Once the message is displayed in this example, the
exception is considered handled and the program
continues with the next statement after the catch
block’s closing brace.
 In this example, the end of the for statement is
reached, so the program continues with the increment
of the control variable in the for header .

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6.7 Enhanced for Statement
 Iterates through the elements of an array without
using a counter, thus avoiding the possibility of
“stepping outside” the array.
 Syntax:
 for (parameter : arrayName)
statement
◦ where parameter has a type and an identifier, and
arrayName is the array through which to iterate.
◦ Parameter type must be consistent with the type of the
elements in the array.

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6.7 Enhanced for Statement (Cont.)
 Figure 6.9 uses the enhanced for statement to
sum the integers in an array of student grades.
 Can be used only to obtain array elements—it
cannot be used to modify elements.
 Can be used in place of the counter-controlled for
statement whenever code looping through an
array does not require access to the counter
indicating the index of the current array element.

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6.8 Passing Arrays to Methods
 To pass an array argument to a method, specify the
name of the array without any brackets.
 When we pass an array object’s reference into a
method, we need not pass the array length as an
additional argument because every array knows its
own length.
 For a method to receive an array reference through a
method call, the method’s parameter list must specify
an array parameter.

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6.8 Passing Arrays to Methods (Cont.)
 When an argument to a method is an entire array
or an individual array element of a reference type,
the called method receives a copy of the reference.
 However, when an argument to a method is an
individual array element of a primitive type, the
called method receives a copy of the element’s
value.
 Such primitive values are called scalars or scalar
quantities.
 To pass an individual array element to a method,
use the indexed name of the array element as an
argument in the method call.

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6.8 Passing Arrays to Methods (cont.)
 Figure 6.10 demonstrates the difference between
passing an entire array and passing a primitive-type
array element to a method.
 Method modifyArray receives a copy of array’s

reference and uses the reference to multiply each of

array’s elements by 2.
 When a copy of an individual primitive-type array

element is passed to a method, modifying the copy

in the called method does not affect the original
value of that element in the calling method’s array.

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6.9 Pass-By-Value vs. Pass-By-Reference
 Two ways to pass arguments in method calls in many
programming languages are pass-by-value and pass-by-
reference.
 When an argument is passed by value, a copy of the
argument’s value is passed to the called method.
◦ The called method works exclusively with the copy.
◦ Changes to the called method’s copy do not affect the original
variable’s value in the caller.
 When an argument is passed by reference, the called
method can access the argument’s value in the caller
directly and modify that data, if necessary.
◦ Improves performance by eliminating the need to copy possibly
large amounts of data.

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6.9 Pass-By-Value vs. Pass-By-Reference
(Cont.)
 Java does not allow you to choose pass-by-value or pass-
by-reference—all arguments are passed by value.
 A method call can pass two types of values to a method
—copies of primitive values and copies of references to
objects.
◦ Objects themselves cannot be passed to methods.
 If you modify a reference-type parameter so that it refers
to another object, only the parameter refers to the new.
 Although an object’s reference is passed by value, a
method can still interact with the referenced object by
calling its public methods using the copy of the object’s
reference.
◦ The parameter in the called method and the argument in the
calling method refer to the same object in memory.

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6.10 Multidimensional Arrays
 Multidimensional arrays with two dimensions are often
used to represent tables of values with data arranged in
rows and columns.
◦ To identify a particular table element, you specify two indices—
the first identifies the element’s row and the second its column.
 Arrays that require two indices to identify each element
are called two-dimensional arrays.
 Multidimensional arrays can have more than two
dimensions.
◦ Java does not support multidimensional arrays directly, but it
allows you to specify one-dimensional arrays whose elements
are also one-dimensional arrays, thus achieving the same effect.

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6.10 Multidimensional Arrays (cont.)
 Figure 6.11 illustrates a two-dimensional array
named a with three rows and four columns (i.e., a
three-by-four array).
 In general, an array with m rows and n columns is

called an m-by-n array.

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6.10 Multidimensional Arrays (cont.)
 Multidimensional arrays can be initialized with array
initializers in declarations.
 A two-dimensional array b with two rows and two
columns could be declared and initialized with nested
array initializers as follows:
 int[][] b = { { 1, 2 }, { 3, 4 } };
 The initial values are grouped by row in braces.
 The compiler counts the number of nested array
initializers to determine the number of rows in array b.
 The compiler counts the initializer values in the nested
array initializer for a row to determine the number of
columns in that row.
 Rows can have different lengths.
 Multidimensional arrays are maintained as arrays of one-
dimensional arrays.
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6.10 Multidimensional Arrays (cont.)
 A multidimensional array with the same number of columns
in every row can be created with an array-creation
expression, as in:
 int[][] b = new int[3][4];
 Programs can also use variables to specify array dimensions,
because new creates arrays at execution time—not at compile
time.
 The elements of a multidimensional array are initialized
when the array object is created.
 A multidimensional array in which each row has a different
number of columns can be created as follows:
 int[][] b = new int[2][ ]; // create 2 rows
b[0] = new int[5]; // create 5 columns for row 0
b[1] = new int[3]; // create 3 columns for row 1

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6.10 Multidimensional Arrays (cont.)
 Figure 6.12 demonstrates initializing two-
dimensional arrays with array initializers, and using
nested for loops to traverse the arrays—that is,
manipulate every element of each array.

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6.11 Variable-Length Argument Lists
 With variable-length argument lists, you can create
methods that receive an unspecified number of
arguments.
 A type followed by an ellipsis (...) in a method’s
parameter list indicates that the method receives a
variable number of arguments of that particular type.
◦ Can occur only once in a parameter list, and the ellipsis, together
with its type and the parameter name, must be placed at the end
of the parameter list.
 Figure 6.13 demonstrates method average which
receives a variable-length sequence of doubles.
 Java treats the variable-length argument list as an array
whose elements are all of the same type.
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6.12 Using Command-Line Arguments
 It’s possible to pass arguments from the command
line to an application via method main’s String[]
parameter, which receives an array of Strings.
 By convention, this parameter is named args.
 When an application is executed using the java

command, Java passes the command-line arguments

that appear after the class name in the java
command to the application’s main method as
Strings in the array args.

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6.13 Class Arrays
 Class Arrays helps you avoid reinventing the wheel by
providing static methods for common array manipulations.
 These methods include sort for sorting an array (i.e.,
arranging elements into ascending order), binarySearch for
searching a sorted array (i.e., determining whether an array
contains a specific value and, if so, where the value is
located), equals for comparing arrays and fill for placing
values into an array.
 These methods are overloaded for primitive-type arrays and
for arrays of objects.
 You can copy arrays with class System’s static arraycopy
method.


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6.13 Class Arrays (Cont.)
Class Arrays Method parallelSort
 The Arrays class now has several new “parallel”
methods that take advantage of multi-core
hardware.
 Arrays method parallelSort can sort large
arrays more efficiently on multi-core systems.
 In Section 23.12, we create a very large array and
use features of the Date/Time API to compare how
long it takes to sort the array with methods sort
and parallelSort.

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6.14 Introduction to Collections and Class
ArrayList
 Collections provide efficient methods that organize,
store and retrieve your data without requiring
knowledge of how the data is being stored.
 The collection class ArrayList<T> (package
java.util) can dynamically change its size to
accommodate more elements.
 The T (by convention) is a placeholder—when
declaring a new ArrayList, replace it with the type of
elements that you want the ArrayList to hold.

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6.14 Introduction to Collections and Class
ArrayList (Cont.)
 Classes with this kind of placeholder that can be
used with any type are called generic classes.
 Figure 6.16 shows some common methods of class
ArrayList<T>.

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6.14 Introduction to Collections and Class
ArrayList (Cont.)
 Figure 6.17 demonstrates some common
ArrayList capabilities.

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6.14 Introduction to Collections and Class
ArrayList (Cont.)
(<>) Notation for Creating an Object of a Generic Class
 Consider:
 ArrayList<String> items = new ArrayList<String>();
 ArrayList<String> appears in the variable declaration
and in the class instance creation expression. The diamond
(<>) notation simplifies statements like this.
 Using <> in a class instance creation expression for an
object of a generic class tells the compiler to determine
what belongs in the angle brackets.

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6.14 Introduction to Collections and Class
ArrayList (Cont.)
 The preceding statement can be written as:
 ArrayList<String> items = new ArrayList<>();
 When the compiler encounters the diamond (<>) in the
class instance creation expression, it uses the declaration
of variable items to determine the ArrayList’s element
type (String)—this is known as inferring the element type.

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