Question

I am coding for my Applictation , i came across a requirement , where i needed to convert a String to char array I

String str_a = "Testing";

char c[] = str_a.toCharArray(); 

for (char d : c) {
    System.out.println(d);
}

As i did not initialize the char c[]

My question is why it doesn’t throw a NullPointerException, typically this should be done this way

char[] char_array = new char[str_a.length()];

char_array = str_a.toCharArray();       

for (char d : c) {
    System.out.println(d);
}

Answer 1

The source code of toCharArray():

/**
 * Converts this string to a new character array.
 *
 * @return  a newly allocated character array whose length is the length
 *          of this string and whose contents are initialized to contain
 *          the character sequence represented by this string.
 */
public char[] toCharArray() {
    char result[] = new char[count]; // <-- Here is the initialization :)
    getChars(0, count, result, 0);
    return result;
}