Initialize String[] with empty strings

Question

I want to create a String array containing multiple empty strings.

String[] array = {"", "", "", "", ""};

In python we could achieve this simply with this code [""] * 5. Is there something similar for java?

Answer 1

Nothing syntactic, no.

At an API level, there's Arrays.fill, but sadly it doesn't return the array you pass it, so you can't use it in the initializer, you have to use it after:

String[] array = new String[5];
Arrays.fill(array, "");

You could always roll-your-own static utility method of course.

public static <T> T[] fill(T[] array, T value) {
    Arrays.fill(array, value);
    return array;
}

then

String[] array = YourNiftyUtilities.fill(new String[5], "");

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(Obviously, it would probably be dodgy to do that with mutable objects, but it's fine with String.)