


#JAVA DIFFERENT ARRAY VS ARRAYLIST MANUAL#
But, this feature is not available with the Arrays, we have to do the manual iteration using for loop or while loop constructs. One of the greatest advantage of storing the objects in the collections API is use of iterator for iterating the elements. All the collection APIs support only storing of the objects and not the primitive values. Since the Java 5 version, though you store the primitive types to an ArrayList, it silently converts ( autoboxing in Java 5) the primitive value to corresponding wrapper class and stores it. It can store primitive types as well as objects.ĪrrayList can hold only the objects using the add method. Primitives and ObjectsĪrrays can be created for either primitives or objects. Note that size method of ArrayList returns only the number of elements currently stored, to know the maximum elements that can be stored in the ArrayList can be accessed using the method capacity. Even though you have not stored any elements in the array, this method will always returns the capacity of the array.ĪrrayList or any other collections APIs that implements List interface defines the method size accessing the size of the object. Length / SizeĪrrays provide the method length for accessing the size of an array.
#JAVA DIFFERENT ARRAY VS ARRAYLIST CODE#
This provides the type-safety for your code at compile time itself. Whereas one of the great advantages of the collections programming is to use the generics for specifying the type of the objects an ArrayList can store. Array knows the type which it can hold, otherwise it will throw the ArrayStoreException when you try to store the wrong data type. GenericsĪrrays can not use the Generics programming introduced in Java 5. This impacts the performance of your programming if it has to increase multiple times for accommodating more elements.

However, when you add the eleventh element, the ArrayList size will be extended to another 10 elements. When you create the above object, the default size of 10 is internally assigned for storing the values. Whereas ArrayList can dynamically increase the size when new elements are added. If you look at the above example, array variable weight is initialized with the length 5, it can not accommodate more than 5 elements. Here is the simple construct for initializing the arrays which I have taken from Java Arrays Example: One of the major difference between Array and ArrayList is that, Array has the fixed length and it can not be extended once it is initialized.

I have started writing the Java best practices series, this is one of the post for clearing the air on misconception about popular Java classes Array and ArrayList. What is the difference between Array and ArrayList is the quite common question for the Java interview and for the beginners who are learning Java programming.
