Java™ How to Program, Seventh Edition

7.3. Declaring and Creating Arrays

Array objects occupy space in memory. Like other objects, arrays are created with keyword new. To create an array object, the programmer specifies the type of the array elements and the number of elements as part of an array-creation expression that uses keyword new. Such an expression returns a reference that can be stored in an array variable. The following declaration and array-creation expression create an array object containing 12 int elements and store the array’s reference in variable c:

int c[] = new int[ 12 ];

This expression can be used to create the array shown in Fig. 7.1. This task also can be performed in two steps as follows:

int c[];             // declare the array variable
c = new int[ 12 ];  // create ...