Menu
I was wondering about the implementation of length of a Java Array. I know that using arrayName.length gives us the number of elements in the array, but was wondering if this is a method / function or it is just a data member of Array?
I guess it must be a data member as we do not use parenthesis() when invoking it. But if it is a data member how/when is the value of this length assigned/computed?
379
In Java, the array length is the number of elements that an array can holds. There is no predefined method to obtain the length of an array. We can find the array length in Java by using the array attribute length. We use this attribute with the array name.
If you want to change the size, you need to create a new array of the desired size, and then copy elements from the old array to the new array, and use the new array. In our example, arr can only hold int values. Arrays can hold primitive values, unlike ArrayList, which can only hold object values.
Summary. The length property of an array is an unsigned, 32-bit integer that is always numerically greater than the highest index of the array. The length returns the number of elements that a dense array has. For the spare array, the length doesn't reflect the number of actual elements in the array.
The simple answer is that you cannot do this. Once an array has been created, its size cannot be changed. Instead, an array can only be "resized" by creating a new array with the appropriate size and copying the elements from the existing array to the new one.
According to the Java Language Specification (specifically §10.7 Array Members) it is a field:
- The
publicfinalfieldlength, which contains the number of components of the array (length may be positive or zero).
Internally the value is probably stored somewhere in the object header, but that is an implementation detail and depends on the concrete JVM implementation.
The HotSpot VM (the one in the popular Oracle (formerly Sun) JRE/JDK) stores the size in the object-header:
[...] arrays have a third header field, for the array size.
124
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
