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Java Local Development Environments Advanced Tooling Teamwork

Prasoon Shukla
Prasoon Shukla
3,426 Points
Posted by Prasoon Shukla
Prasoon Shukla
3,426 Points

Array to List conversion

In Main.java, what is the purpose of doing: List<String> fakeResults = Arrays.asList() ?Why are we converting array as list? Can we not use a list directly here?

Grigorij Schleifer
Grigorij Schleifer
10,365 Points
Grigorij Schleifer
Grigorij Schleifer
10,365 Points

Hey Prasoon,

glad I could help :)

See you in the forum

Grigorij

1 Answer

Grigorij Schleifer
Grigorij Schleifer
10,365 Points
Grigorij Schleifer
Grigorij Schleifer
10,365 Points

Hi Prasoon,

I think the main reason why you convert an array into a List is because Lists are much easier to use and have much more functionality.

Array is static in size that is fixed length data structure, One can not change the length after creating the Array object. So if you have an array and it can hold 6 primitives and suddenly you want to add more then 6 items into it. You can´t ! You will need to create a bigger array and combine them together and so on .... ugly right :)

List is an interface in Java, which means that it may have multiple implementations. One of these implementations is ArrayList, which is a class that implements the behavior of the List interface using arrays as the data structure.

So if you convert an array into List and implement/add the functionality of an ArrayList for example, you can add items into this List/ArrayList and enjoy it. Because elements are added to an ArrayList its capacity grows automatically.

Here is a great comparison between ArrayList and array:

http://javahungry.blogspot.com/2015/03/difference-between-array-and-arraylist-in-java-example.html

I hope i could help :)

Grigorij

Prasoon Shukla
Prasoon Shukla
3,426 Points
Prasoon Shukla
Prasoon Shukla
3,426 Points

Thanks Grigorij! So can I say that use of array here is more because of 'best-practice' here and the code would have run even if we just use plain simple list here? (Although I understand now why it is important to use Array List).

Edit: I just realized we would need an array list here because we want the user to give as many inputs (names, nouns, adjectives) in their story. If we use a list here, this would only allow user to give inputs in the list and not based on the number of placeholders( name) in the story.

Thanks for your help!