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Arrays and Enumerated Types
Arrays
An
array is an object of reference type which contains a fixed number
of components of the same type; the length of an array is immutable. Creating
an instance of an array requires knowledge of the length and component type.
Each component may be a primitive type (e.g.
byte,
int, or
double), a reference type
(e.g.
String,
Object, or
java.nio.CharBuffer), or an array. Multi-dimensional arrays are really just arrays which contain
components of array type.
Arrays are implemented in the Java virtual machine. The only methods on
arrays are those inherited from
Object. The length of an array is not part of its type; arrays have a
length field which is accessible via
java.lang.reflect.Array.getLength().
Reflection provides methods for accessing array types and array component
types, creating new arrays, and retrieving and setting array component values.
The following sections include examples of common operations on arrays:
All of these operations are supported via static methods in
java.lang.reflect.Array.
