Question

I am writing a program that will be heavily reliant on … something … that stores data like an array where I am able to access any point of the data at any given time as I can in an array.

I know that the java library has an Array class that I could use or I could use a raw array[].

I expect that using the Array type is a bit easier to code, but I expect that it is slightly less efficient as well.

My question is, which is better to use between these two, and is there a better way to accomplish the same result?

Answer 1

Actually Array would be of no help — it’s not what you think it is. The class java.util.ArrayList, on the other hand, is. In general, if you can program with collection classes like ArrayList, do so — you’ll more easily arrive at correct, flexible software that’s easier to read, too. And that “if” applies almost all the time; raw arrays are something you use as a last resort or, more often, when a method you want to call requires one as an argument.