Question

Hi i’m relatively new to java programming. The following program i’ve written seems to be taking a lot of memory(around 240 MB, is it normal? – I don’t think so!)
Please suggest some ways to optimise this program so to reduce memory storage.

Program –

 You have 2 sorted array suppose arr1[4] and arr2[3]
          now we have to combinely sort them using very little extra space(i.e. in-place sort)
          ex..arr1[4]={5,8,11,14,16}
          arr[2]={1,7,10}
          then result should be--in arr1[4]={1,5,7,8,10}
          in arr2[3]={11,14,16}

Code –

import java.util.*;

class sort_in_place
{
    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        // input 2 sorted arrays
        int []a = {5,8,11,14,16};
        int []b = {1,7,10};

        System.out.println("initial array: a = "+Arrays.toString(a)+"   b = "+Arrays.toString(b)+"\n");

        // use extra space to store the array 'a' elements.
        int key = 0, i=0; 

        for( i=0; i<a.length ; i++)
        {
             key = a[i];         // store value in temporary variable key.

            // if key is greater than 1st element of array 'b' then exchange their values and sort array 'b'
            if(key > b[0])
            {
                int j = 1;
                a[i] = b[0];
                while(j<b.length && key > b[j])
                {
                    b[j-1] = b[j];
                    j++;
                }
                b[j-1] = key;
            }
        }
        System.out.println("final array: a = "+Arrays.toString(a)+"   b = "+Arrays.toString(b)+"\n");
    }
}

Answer 1

You need to remember that a Java program cannot run on its own, but need the Java Virtual Machine platform to handle memory, byte code execution and other tasks. The Oracle JVM uses quite a bit of memory to speed up execution so even trivially small programs come with a large start-up penalty.

This is why small utilities are rarely written in Java.

You need to measure inside the JVM to determine if you use too much memory. Use a profiler for that. JVisualVM in the JDK is a good, free starting profiler.