How do I compare if two arrays are equal?

Using Arrays.equals() methods we can compare if two arrays are equal. Two arrays are considered to be equal if their length, each element in both arrays are equal and in the same order to one another.

package org.kodejava.util;

import java.util.Arrays;

public class CompareArrayExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String[] abc = {"Kode", "Java", "Dot", "Org"};
        String[] xyz = {"Kode", "Java", "Dot", "Org"};
        String[] java = {"Java", "Dot", "Com"};

        System.out.println(Arrays.equals(abc, xyz));
        System.out.println(Arrays.equals(abc, java));
    }
}

The Arrays.equals() can be used to compare array of any primitive data type and array of Object. If you run this example you will have a result as follows:

true
false

How do I create a repeated sequence of character?

This example shows you how to create a repeated sequence of characters. To do this, we use the Arrays.fill() method. This method fills an array of char with a character.

package org.kodejava.util;

import java.util.Arrays;

public class RepeatCharacterExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        char c = '*';
        int length = 10;

        // creates a char array with 10 elements
        char[] chars = new char[length];

        // fill each element of the char array with '*'
        Arrays.fill(chars, c);

        // print out the repeated '*'
        System.out.println(String.valueOf(chars));
    }
}

As the result you get the x character repeated 10 times.

**********

For one-liner code, you can use the following code snippet, which will give you the same result.

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String str = new String(new char[10]).replace('\u0000', '*');
    }
}

Or

import java.util.Collections;

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String str = String.join("", Collections.nCopies(10, "*"));
    }
}

How do I use StringTokenizer to split a string?

The code below is an example of using StringTokenizer to split a string. In the current JDK this class is discouraged to be used, use the String.split(...) method instead or using the new java.util.regex package.

package org.kodejava.util;

import java.util.StringTokenizer;

public class StringTokenizerExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        StringTokenizer st =
            new StringTokenizer("A StringTokenizer sample");

        // get how many tokens inside st object
        System.out.println("Tokens count: " + st.countTokens());

        // iterate st object to get more tokens from it
        while (st.hasMoreElements()) {
            String token = st.nextElement().toString();
            System.out.println("Token = " + token);
        }

        // split a date string using a forward slash as delimiter
        st = new StringTokenizer("2021/09/14", "/");
        while (st.hasMoreElements()) {
            String token = st.nextToken();
            System.out.println("Token = " + token);
        }
    }
}

Here is the result of this sample code:

Tokens count: 3
Token = A
Token = StringTokenizer
Token = sample
Token = 2021
Token = 09
Token = 14

How do I know if an ArrayList contains a specified item?

In this example we are going to learn how to find out if an ArrayList object contains the specified element. To check if an ArrayList object contains the specified element we can use the contains(Object o) method. This method returns a boolean true when the specified element is found in the ArrayList, otherwise return false. The method returns true if and only if the list contains at least one element, where the element equals to the item in the list.

Let’s see the code snippet below to demonstrate it.

package org.kodejava.util;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class ArrayListContainsExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();
        list.add("Item 1");
        list.add("Item 2");
        list.add("Item 3");
        list.add("Item 4");

        // Check to see if the list contains "Item 1".
        String itemToFind = "Item 1";
        System.out.println("contains(" + itemToFind + "): " + list.contains(itemToFind));

        // Check to see if the list contains "Item 20".
        itemToFind = "Item 20";
        System.out.println("contains(" + itemToFind + "): " + list.contains(itemToFind));
    }
}

The output of the code snippet above are:

contains(Item 1): true
contains(Item 20): false

How do I know the size of ArrayList?

In this example we are going to learn how to obtain the size of an ArrayList object. As you might already know, a java.util.ArrayList is a class that we can use to create a dynamic sized array. We can add and remove elements from the ArrayList dynamically.

Because its elements can be added or removed at anytime, we might want to know the number of elements currently stored in this list. To obtain the size we can use the size() method. This method returns an int value that tells us the number of elements stored in the ArrayList object.

When the list contains more than Integer.MAX_VALUE elements this method returns Integer.MAX_VALUE.

package org.kodejava.util;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class ArrayListSize {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();
        list.add("Item 1");
        list.add("Item 2");
        list.add("Item 3");

        int size = list.size();
        System.out.println("List size = " + size);
    }
}

In the code snippet above we start creating an instance of ArrayList that can holds String values. As a good practice we should always use the interface as the type of the declared object, in this case we use the List interface. The <> is a diamond operator, started from JDK 7 you can use this operator so that you don’t need to repeat the generic type twice between the declaration and instantiation.

After we create the ArrayList object and add string elements to the list object, we get the size of the list by calling the size() method. We store the result in the size variable and print out its value. If you compile and run the code above you will get the following output:

List size = 3