How to Initialize an Array in Java

How to initialize an array in Java?

data[10] = {10,20,30,40,50,60,71,80,90,91};

The above is not correct (syntax error). It means you are assigning an array to data[10] which can hold just an element.

If you want to initialize an array, try using Array Initializer:

int[] data = {10,20,30,40,50,60,71,80,90,91};

// or

int[] data;
data = new int[] {10,20,30,40,50,60,71,80,90,91};

Notice the difference between the two declarations. When assigning a new array to a declared variable, new must be used.

Even if you correct the syntax, accessing data[10] is still incorrect (You can only access data[0] to data[9] because index of arrays in Java is 0-based). Accessing data[10] will throw an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException.

How do I declare and initialize an array in Java?

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};

// Since Java 8. Doc of IntStream: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/stream/IntStream.html

int [] myIntArray = IntStream.range(0, 100).toArray(); // From 0 to 99
int [] myIntArray = IntStream.rangeClosed(0, 100).toArray(); // From 0 to 100
int [] myIntArray = IntStream.of(12,25,36,85,28,96,47).toArray(); // The order is preserved.
int [] myIntArray = IntStream.of(12,25,36,85,28,96,47).sorted().toArray(); // Sort 

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 an array first and then initialize it, pass an array as a function argument, or return an array. The explicit type is required.

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

Initialize part of an array in java

You can do something like this, it will create array with new size based on provided.

    String[] temp = new String[] {"water", "shovel", "berries", "stick", "stone", "seed", "axe"};
    String[] val = Arrays.copyOf(temp, 20);

    System.out.println(val.length);
    System.out.println(Arrays.toString(val));

The output will be:

20
[water, shovel, berries, stick, stone, seed, axe, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null]

How to initialize all the elements of an array to any specific value in java

If it's a primitive type, you can use Arrays.fill():

Arrays.fill(array, -1);

[Incidentally, memset in C or C++ is only of any real use for arrays of char.]

Do we need to initialize an array in Java?

In Java, all array elements are automatically initialized to the default value. For primitive numerical types, that's 0 or 0.0. For booleans, that's false. For objects, that's null.

In other languages such as C++, the values in an uninitialized array are undefined. Some compilers may initialize to 0/null similarly for security, and it's very bad practice to rely on this. However, this behavior is well defined in Java and so it's perfectly okay to create a primitive array and trust that the values are 0.

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