Arrays in Java
Dr. Shariq Hussain
Motivation
• How to organize 100 Student objects?
• 100 different Student object names?
• Organize data for efficient access
–Class: different data types in one object
–Array: multiple objects of the same type
Overview
• An array
– a single name for a collection of data values
– all of the same data type
– subscript notation to identify one of the values
• A carryover from earlier programming languages
• More than a primitive type, less than an object
– like objects when used as method parameters and return
types
– do not have or use inheritance
• Accessing each of the values in an array
– Usually a for loop
Creating Arrays
• General syntax for declaring an array:
Base_Type[] Array_Name = new Base_Type[Length];
• Examples:
80-element array with base type char:
char[] symbol = new char[80];
100-element array of doubles:
double[] reading = new double[100];
70-element array of Species:
Species[] specimen = new Species[70];
Three Ways to Use [ ] (Brackets) with an Array Name
1. Declaring an array: int[] score
• creates a name of type "int array"
– types int and int[] are different
• int[]: type of the array
• int : type of the individual values
2. To create a new array, e.g. score = new int[100];
3. To refer to a specific element in the array
- also called an indexed variable, e.g.
score[3] = keyboard.nextInt();
System.out.println("You entered" + score[3]);
Arrays
• An array is an ordered list of values
The entire array Each value has a numeric index
has a single name
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
scores 79 87 94 82 67 98 87 81 74 91
An array of size N is indexed from zero to N-1
This array holds 10 values that are indexed from 0 to 9
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Arrays
• A particular value in an array is referenced using the array name
followed by the index in brackets
• For example, the expression
scores[2]
refers to the value 94 (the 3rd value in the array)
• That expression represents a place to store a single integer and can be
used wherever an integer variable can be used
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Arrays • For example, an array element can be assigned a value,
printed, or used in a calculation:
scores[2] = 89;
scores[first] = scores[first] + 2;
mean = (scores[0] + scores[1])/2;
System.out.println ("Top = " + scores[5]);
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• The values held in an array are called array elements
Arrays
• An array stores multiple values of the same type – the
element type
• The element type can be a primitive type or an object
reference
• Therefore, we can create an array of integers, an array
of characters, an array of String objects, an array of
Coin objects, etc.
• In Java, the array itself is an object that must be
instantiated
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Arrays • Another way to depict the scores array:
scores 79
87
94
82
67
98
87
81
74
91
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Declaring Arrays
• The scores array could be declared as follows:
int[] scores = new int[10];
• The type of the variable scores is int[] (an array of integers)
• Note that the array type does not specify its size, but each object of
that type has a specific size
• The reference variable scores is set to a new array object that can
hold 10 integers
• An array is an object, therefore all the values are initialized to
default ones (here 0)
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Declaring Arrays
• Some other examples of array declarations:
float[] prices = new float[500];
boolean[] flags;
flags = new boolean[20];
char[] codes = new char[1750];
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Using Arrays
• for loop can be used when processing array elements
for (int i = 0; i < scores.length; i++)
System.out.println (scores[i]);
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final int LIMIT = 15, MULTIPLE = 10;
int[] list = new int[LIMIT];
// Initialize the array values
for (int index = 0; index < LIMIT; index++)
list[index] = index * MULTIPLE;
list[5] = 999; // change one array value
// Print the array values
for (int index = 0; index < LIMIT; index++)
System.out.print (list[index] + " ");
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Bounds Checking
• Once an array is created, it has a fixed size
• An index used in an array reference must specify a valid element
• That is, the index value must be in range 0 to N-1
• The Java interpreter throws an
ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if an array index is out of
bounds
• This is called automatic bounds checking
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Bounds Checking
• For example, if the array codes can hold 100 values, it can be indexed using only
the numbers 0 to 99
• If the value of count is 100, then the following reference will cause an exception
to be thrown:
System.out.println (codes[count]);
• It’s common to introduce off-by-one errors when using arrays
problem
for (int index=0; index <= 100; index++)
codes[index] = index*50 + epsilon;
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Bounds Checking
• Each array object has a public constant called length that stores the size of the
array
• It is referenced using the array name. e.g.
scores.length
• Note that length holds the number of elements, not the largest index
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ReverseOrder
Scanner scan = new Scanner (System.in);
double[] numbers = new double[10];
System.out.println ("The size of the array: " + numbers.length);
for (int index = 0; index < numbers.length; index++) {
System.out.print ("Enter number " + (index+1) + ": ");
numbers[index] = scan.nextDouble();
}
System.out.println ("The numbers in reverse order:");
for (int index = numbers.length-1; index >= 0; index--)
System.out.print (numbers[index] + " ");
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Char type
String st = "abcd";
for(int i =0; i < st.length (); i++ ) {
char c = st.charAt (i);
System.out.print(c); Output:
System.out.print(" ");
a 97 0
System.out.print((int) c);
b 98 1
System.out.print(" ");
c 99 2
System.out.println(c - 'a');
}
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Letter Count
// program to count upper case, lower case, and other characters
final int NUMCHARS = 26; // number of alphabets
Scanner scan = new Scanner (System.in);
int[] upper = new int[NUMCHARS]; //each element store count
int[] lower = new int[NUMCHARS];
char current; // the current character being processed
int other = 0; // counter for non-alphabetics
System.out.println ("Enter a sentence:");
String line = scan.nextLine(); // read a sentence from user
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Letter Count (contd.)
// Count the number of each letter occurence
for (int j = 0; j < line.length(); j++) //string method .length()
{
current = line.charAt(j);
if (current >= 'A' && current <= 'Z')
upper[current-'A']++;
else
if (current >= 'a' && current <= 'z')
lower[current-'a']++;
else
other++;
}
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Letter Count (contd.)
// Print the results
System.out.println ();
for (int letter=0; letter < upper.length; letter++)
{
System.out.print ( (char) (letter + 'A') );
System.out.print (": " + upper[letter]);
System.out.print ("\t\t" + (char) (letter + 'a') );
System.out.println (": " + lower[letter]);
}
System.out.println ();
System.out.println ("Non-alphabetic characters: " + other);
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