Arrays in Java are data structures that store a collection of elements of the same type in a contiguous memory location. They allow you to store multiple values in a single variable, and provide a way to access these elements using index-based referencing. Arrays are declared using the new operator and the type of elements that the array will hold, followed by square brackets and a set of empty square brackets. For example:
int[] numbers = new int[5];This creates an array of 5 elements, each of type int. The individual elements can be accessed using the array name followed by the index of the element in square brackets, starting from 0. For example:
numbers[0] = 42;Java also provides several built-in methods for working with arrays, such as sort and copyOf.
In Java, there are two main types of arrays:
- One-dimensional arrays: These are arrays with a single row of elements, and are declared using the type of elements followed by square brackets. For example:
int[] numbers = new int[5];- Multi-dimensional arrays: These are arrays with multiple rows and columns, and are declared using multiple sets of square brackets. For example:
int[][] numbers = new int[3][3];This creates a 2-dimensional array with 3 rows and 3 columns, where each element is of type int.
In addition to these two main types, Java also supports arrays of any number of dimensions, such as 3-dimensional arrays, 4-dimensional arrays, and so on.
