How do I declare and initialize an array in Java?

How do I declare and initialize an array in Java?

Answer

You can either use array declaration or array literal (but only when you declare and affect the variable right away, array literals cannot be used for re-assigning an array).

For primitive types:

int[] myIntArray = new int[3];
int[] myIntArray = {1, 2, 3};
int[] myIntArray = new int[]{1, 2, 3};

For classes, for example String, it's the same:

String[] myStringArray = new String[3];
String[] myStringArray = {"a", "b", "c"};

String[] myStringArray = new String[]{"a", "b", "c"};

The third way of initializing is useful when you declare the array first and then initialize it. The cast is necessary here.

String[] myStringArray;
myStringArray = new String[]{"a", "b", "c"};