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Java Java Data Structures Exploring the Java Collection Framework Sets

Posted by Steven Williams
Steven Williams
2,199 Points

Arrays.asList

Can someone please explain Arrays.asList? As I am watching the video, it is being used in this way: list<String> frontEndLanguages = Array.asList("HTML", "CSS", "Javascript");

Can someone explain to me what is happening here? Is Array.asList a method here? And what is list<String>? I get that String is a class and therefore it must be the type. True? But what does list mean here? Does that mean a list of Strings? Can both list and Array.asList be explained and please tie them together in the way they are being used here? Thanks.

2 Answers

jcorum
jcorum
71,830 Points

Arrays.asList() turns an array into a list. Here's a sample program to demonstate:

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

/*
 * A java example source code to demonstrate
 * the use of asList() method of Arrays class
 */

public class ArraysAsListExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        // initialize a new String array
        String[] array = new String[]{"A","B","C"};

        // convert the student database into list
        List alist = Arrays.asList(array);

        // print how many student on the list
        System.out.println("Count of letters: " + alist.size());

        // print the contents of our list
      System.out.println(alist);

      // edit list
      alist.set(2, "CC");

      // print edited list
      System.out.println(alist);

      // print array
      for (int i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
         System.out.print(array[i] + " ");
      }

    }
}

Not that changing the list also changes the array. (Sorry, the code indentation gets messed up when I paste it into the markup!).

Here's the output:

Count of letters: 3
[A, B, C]
[A, B, CC]
A B CC
Steven Williams
Steven Williams
2,199 Points

Perfect. Thank you!

Carlos Lázaro Costa
PLUS
Carlos Lázaro Costa
Courses Plus Student 1,615 Points
Carlos Lázaro Costa
Carlos Lázaro Costa
Courses Plus Student 1,615 Points

List<T> is a lineal collection where you store elements of type T (note that L is uppercase because is a class name). As you said, List<String> means that the list is of String objects. You can see the methods of Lists here. Note that List is an interface, so you cannot instantiate it directly, but you can do it by some List implementations like ArrayList or LinkedList.

Arrays.asList(T... a) converts an array of objects to a List<T>. Then, in your sentence

List<String> frontEndLanguages = Arrays.asList("HTML", "CSS", "Javascript");

The VM are doing the following steps:

  1. Initializes an String[] array of three positions with the elements in parameters.
  2. Calls asList static method of class Arrays (not Array class).
  3. Result is assigned to the list named frontEndLanguages. More information of this method here.

Hope this answered your question. Greetings.

Steven Williams
Steven Williams
2,199 Points

Thank you!