Arrays

Submitted by GeePee on Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - 22:31.

Introduction: Welcome, this page will teach you about Arrays within Java. What is an Array? An array is a variable which holds more than one value, in effect, it's a list of values attached to a variable name. When are Arrays Used? Arrays are very useful for holding lists of values for certain scripts. For example; holding the id of each button that has been activated within a game. Once a button is clicked, it's ID gets added to the array of clicked buttons which then gives a list of clicked button ids to be used at a later date. Examples: First we need to decide what type of variable the array will hold, the amount of data it will hold (maximum) and we also need a variable name. Once we have those we can create our new array using the format {type}[] {variable name} = new {type}[{size}]:

int[] myArray = new int[10];

The above code will create a new variable named "myArray" which is equal to a new int array of 10 values (technically it is 9 values, and 0). Now we are able to insert values in to the 10 spaces within our new array, such as...

myArray[0] = 0;
myArray[1] = 10;
myArray[2] = 100;
myArray[3] = 1000;
myArray[4] = 10000;

Next lets output the values of each placement in our array...

for (int i=0;i<myArray.length;i++){
	System.out.println(myArray[i]);
}

You are also able to edit previously set values. Lets change the first value (0) to 100000 then re-output all the values to our console and observe the change...

myArray[0] = 100000;
for (int i=0;i<myArray.length;i++){
	System.out.println(myArray[i]);
}

Here is the output to the console we get in total once we run the program. As you can see; 1 - There is a change in value 0, as we attempted. 2 - There are alot of "0"s after the ending 4 (5) value of our integer array which we had set. This is because, even if the placements don't have a custom, user set value, they still exist and have a default value.

Finished!

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