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I was looking through the Java documentation, and I came across the clear() method of ArrayLists.
What’s the use of this, as opposed to simply reassigning a new ArrayList object to the variable?
Because there might be multiple references to the one list, it might be preferable and/or more practical to clear it than reassigning all the references.
If you empty your array a lot (within, say, a large loop) there’s no point creating lots of temporary objects. Sure the garbage collector will eventually clean them up but there’s no point being wasteful with resources if you don’t have to be.
And because clearing the list is less work than creating a new one.