Programmer's Guide to Java™ Certification, A: A Comprehensive Primer, Second Edition

4.1. Arrays

An array is a data structure that defines an indexed collection of a fixed number of homogeneous data elements. This means that all elements in the array have the same data type. A position in the array is indicated by a non-negative integer value called the index. An element at a given position in the array is accessed using the index. The size of an array is fixed and cannot increase to accommodate more elements.

In Java, arrays are objects. Arrays can be of primitive data types or reference types. In the former case, all elements in the array are of a specific primitive data type. In the latter case, all elements are references of a specific reference type. References in the array can then denote objects of this reference type ...