ArrayList

ArrayList is like a regular Java array on steroids. It overcomes some of the shortfalls of arrays, such as having to predetermine the size. It adds some useful methods to make its data easy to manage and it uses an enhanced version of a for loop that is clearer to use than a regular for loop.

Let's look at some code that uses an ArrayList instance:

// Declare a new ArrayList called myList to hold int variables
ArrayList<int> myList;
 
// Initialize the myList ready for use
myList = new ArrayList<int>();

In the previous code, we declared and initialized a new ArrayList called myList. We can also do this in a single step like this code shows:

ArrayList<int> myList = new ArrayList<int>();

Nothing especially interesting so far, so let's take a look at what we can actually do with ArrayList. Let's use a String ArrayList instance this time:

// declare and initialize a new ArrayList
ArrayList<String> myList = new ArrayList...