Question

I am declaring a String array as:

String[] items = new String[10];
items[0] = "item1";
items[1] = "item2";

How can I find length of items in an efficient way that it contains only 2 elements. items.length returns 10.

I am running a loop already which runs to its length. I want to so something with this code without adding new code/loop to count number of not-null elements. What can I replace with items.length

for (int i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
...
}

Answer 1

No. You will need to loop and see how many non-null elements there are.

Consider using e.g. an ArrayList<String> instead of a raw array.

UPDATE

To answer the new part of your question, your loop can become:

for (int i = 0; (i < items.length) && (items[i] != null); i++) {
    ...
}