Arrays

A lecture snippet with a mentor as part of the Codegym University course. Sign up for the full course.

"Hi, Amigo!"

"Hey, Ellie!"

"Today, I'll tell you about a new and interesting entity: arrays. An array is a data type that can store several values instead of just one."

"Let's start with an analogy. Let's compare a house and an apartment building. An ordinary house is usually occupied by just one family, but an apartment building is divided into many apartments. To send a letter to a family living in a house, you need to indicate the unique address of the house. To send a letter to a family living in an apartment building, you need to write the apartment building's unique address and the apartment number."

"Everything seems clear so far."

"An array variable is like an apartment-building variable. You can store many values in it instead of just one. Such a variable has several apartments (elements) that you can refer to using an apartment number (index). To do this, indicate the index of the array element you want to access in square brackets after the name of the array variable. It's quite simple."

"I hope so, Ellie."

"An apartment-building variable (array variable) can contain elements of any type. You just need to write 'TypeName[] variable_name' instead of 'TypeName variable_name'."

Here are some examples:

String[] list = new String[5];

System.out.println(list[0]);
System.out.println(list[1]);
System.out.println(list[2]);
System.out.println(list[3]);
System.out.println(list[4]);

int listCount = list.length;

list[1] = "Mom";
String s = list[1];

for (int i = 0; i < list.length; i++)
{
     System.out.println(list[i]);
}

"How interesting!"

"An array variable requires additional initialization."

— ?

"With a regular variable, you can just declare it and then assign various values to it. With an array, it's a bit more complicated."

"You must first create a container that will hold N elements, and only then can you start placing values into the container."

String[] list = null;

String[] list = new String[5];

String[] list = new String[1];

String[] list = new String[0];

"I see. Now it's getting clearer."

"Here are some basic facts about arrays:"

1) An array consists of many elements.

2) To access a certain element, you indicate its number (index).

3) All elements are of the same type.

4) The initial value for all elements is null; for arrays of primitive types, the initial value is 0, 0.0 (for fractional numbers), or false (for booleans). It's exactly the same as with uninitialized variables that are not in arrays.

5) String[] list simply declares a variable. You need to first create an array (container), put something into it, and only then use it (see the example below).

6) When we create an array (container) object, we need to indicate its length, or the number of elements. We do this using new TypeName[n];

Here are some examples:

String s;
String[] list;

list = new String[10];
int n = list.length;

list = new String[0];

list = null;
System.out.println(list[1]);

list = new String[10];
System.out.println(list[11]);