How do I declare and initialize an array in Java?

You can either use array declaration or array literal (but only when you declare and affect the variable right away, array literals cannot be used for re-assigning an array).

For primitive types:

int[] myIntArray = new int[3];
int[] myIntArray = {1, 2, 3};
int[] myIntArray = new int[]{1, 2, 3};

// Since Java 8. Doc of IntStream: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/stream/IntStream.html

int [] myIntArray = IntStream.range(0, 100).toArray(); // From 0 to 99
int [] myIntArray = IntStream.rangeClosed(0, 100).toArray(); // From 0 to 100
int [] myIntArray = IntStream.of(12,25,36,85,28,96,47).toArray(); // The order is preserved.
int [] myIntArray = IntStream.of(12,25,36,85,28,96,47).sorted().toArray(); // Sort 

For classes, for example String, it’s the same:

String[] myStringArray = new String[3];
String[] myStringArray = {"a", "b", "c"};
String[] myStringArray = new String[]{"a", "b", "c"};

The third way of initializing is useful when you declare an array first and then initialize it, pass an array as a function argument, or return an array. The explicit type is required.

String[] myStringArray;
myStringArray = new String[]{"a", "b", "c"};

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