Question

I’m trying to think of the best way to return an empty array, rather than null.

Is there any difference between foo() and bar()?

private static File[] foo() {
    return Collections.emptyList().toArray(new File[0]);
}

private static File[] bar() {
    return new File[0];
}

Answer 1

A different way to return an empty array is to use a constant as all empty arrays of a given type are the same.

private static final File[] NO_FILES = {};
private static File[] bar(){
    return NO_FILES;
}