what is the best way of passing unknown number of strings to a function in java

Question

I want to pass a diffrent number of strings to a function in java, it suppose to be the strings to filter a query by, it could be 2-4 strings.

What do you think will be the best way to do that?

a) creating an overload for the same function with different number of parameters? b) create a new instance of an array of string and pass it to the function?

any other preffered way?

thanks

Answer 1

Java has supported variable argument lists since 1.5:

public void myMethod(String... values)
{
    for (String val : values)
    {
        // do something
    }
}

The rules are simple:

• The variable argument must be the last argument in the method signature.
• It's a single argument, so all values will be of the same type.
• Inside the method, the vararg appears to be an array.
• When calling the method, you can either pass individual values or an array.