Add a value to an array? - java

I've just created a new array that is one larger than my previous array and I want to copy the values in my first array into my new one. How do I add a new value to the last index of the new array?
This is what I've tried:
public void addTime(double newTime) {
if (numOfTimes == times.length)
increaseSize();
times[numOfTimes] = newTime;
}

I would recommend trying to use an object such as java.util.List rather than raw arrays. Then you can just do:
times.add(newTime) and it handles the sizing for you.

Why not you use System.arraycopy function.
increaseSIze()
{
double [] temp = new double[times.lebgth+1];
System.arrayCopy(times,0,temp,0,times.length);
times=temp;
}
after that you have times array with 1 increased size.

To set a new value to the last index you can do
times[times.length - 1] = newTime;

Array indices go from 0..n-1.
array[array.length - 1] will address the value at the end of the array.

The last item of an array is always at myArray.length - 1. In your case the last element from the times array is times[times.length - 1]. Have a look at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/nutsandbolts/arrays.html for more information about arrays.
But more importantly: If you're trying to change the capacity of your array, you are most likely using the wrong data structure for the job. Have a look at Oracle's Introduction to Collections (and especially the ArrayList class if you need an array-like index to access elements).

why wouldn't you want a java.util.ArrayList for this requirement? Practically, there won't be a need managing its size. You just simply do this:
List<Double> list = new ArrayList<Double>();
list.add(newTime);

Consider Arrays.copyOf if working with arrays is a constraint:
import java.util.Arrays;
...
private void increaseSize() {
// Allocate new array with an extra trailing element with value 0.0d
this.times = Arrays.copyOf( times, times.length + 1 );
}
...
Note that if you are doing this type array management often and in unpredictable ways, you may want to consider one of the Java Collection Framework classes such as ArrayList. One of the design goals of ArrayList is to administer size management, much like the JVM itself administers memory management.
I've developed an online executable example here.

Related

How do I check if my int array is empty, with the standard value being 0?

So I have come across an issue I do not seem to be able to fix. So lets say I have an int array and want to check whether the array still has space to add a certain element (from 0-∞) or has no space left, which would mean I would need to create a new array.
The issue is that when my int array has a space to store ten values, all of the spaces are filled with 0, so my program thinks that this array is full. And I can not exclude 0 either because the element which I want to add could be 0 aswell.
Any advice?
You are probably using an int[]? The primitive type int can not be null. A very simple solution would be to use the wrapper class Integer.
Integer[] intArray = {null, 0, 10};
You need to keep track of which positions are filled via additional variables. A Java array itself (when created) is initialized with 0-s and it is technically always full.
If you need a dynamically expanding array, my suggestion is to use java.util.List, which is very handy and in most situations can replace a Java array nicely.
A List tutorial is easy to find, here is an example .
And this is how you use it:
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
....
List<String> a = new ArrayList<>();
a.add("Hello");
a.add("World");
System.out.println(a.size());
You can easily convert to a standard array: a.toArray().
If your numbers are always greater or equal 0, you could just set unused numbers to -1.

What is the time complexity of the add and element in a Java Array?

Hello I am research about that, but I cannot found anything in the oracle website.
The question is the next.
If you are using an static Array like this
int[] foo = new int[10];
And you want add some value to the 4 position of this ways
foor[4] = 4;
That don't shift the elements of the array so the time complexity will be O(1) because if you array start at 0x000001, and have 10 spaces, and you want put some in the x position you can access by (x*sizeOf(int))+initialMemoryPosition (this is a pseudocode)
Is this right, is this the way of that this type of array works in java, and if its time complexity O(1)
Thanks
The question is based on a misconception: in Java, you can't add elements to an array.
An array gets allocated once, initially, with a predefined number of entries. It is not possible to change that number later on.
In other words:
int a[] = new int[5];
a[4] = 5;
doesn't add anything. It just sets a value in memory.
So, if at all, we could say that we have somehow "O(1)" for accessing an address in memory, as nothing related to arrays depends on the number of entries.
Note: if you ask about ArrayList, things are different, as here adding to the end of the array can cause the creation of a new, larger (underlying) array, and moving of data.
An array is somewhere in memory. You don’t have control where, and you should not care where it is. The array is initialized when using the new type[size] syntax is used.
Accessing the array is done using the [] index operator. It will never modify size or order. Just the indexed location if you assign to it.
See also https://www.w3schools.com/java/java_arrays.asp
The time complexity is already correctly commented on. But that is the concern after getting the syntax right.
An old post regarding time complexity of collections can be found here.
Yes, it takes O(1) time. When you initialize an array, lets say, int[] foo = new int[10],
then it will create a new array with 0s. Since int has 4 bytes, which is 32 bits, every time assign a value to one element, i.e., foo[4] = 5, it will do foo[32 x input(which is 4)] = value(5); That's why array is 0-indexed, and how they assign values in O(1) time.

Techniques to redimension an array in Java : is "nullifying" the array bad?

I'm learning Java and surprisingly I found out that Java arrays are not dynamic - even though its cousing languages have dynamic arrays.
So I came out with ideas to kind of imitate a dynamic array in java on my own.
One thought I had was to copy the original array references to a temporary array, then turn the original array to null, re-set its index to a bigger value and then finally re-copy the values from the temporary array.
Example.:
if(numberOfEntries == array.length){
Type[] temp = new Type[numberOfEntries];
for(int x=0; x < numberOfEntries; x++){
temp[x] = array[x];
}
array = null;
array = new Type[numberOfEntries+1];
for(int x=0; x < numberOfEntries; x++){
array[x] = temp[x];
}
I know that this can result in data loss if the process is interrupted, but aside from that, is this a bad idea? What are my options?
Thanks!
Your idea is in the right ballpark. But for a task that you propose you should never implement your own version, unless it is for academic purposes and fun.
What you propose is roughly implemented by the ArrayList class.
This has an internal array and a size 'counter'. The internal array is filled when items are added. When the internal array is full all elements are copied to a bigger array. The internal array is never released to the user of the class (to make sure it's state is always valid).
In your example code, because an array is a pointer, you don't really need the temp array. Just create a new one, copy all elements and save the pointer to it as your array.
You might want to look into thrashing. Changing the size of the array by 1 is likely to be very inefficient. Depending on your use case, you might want to increase the array size by double, and similarly halve the array when it's only a quarter full.
ArrayList is convenient, but once it's full, it takes linear time to add an element. You can achieve something similar to resizing with the ensureCapacity() method. I'd recommend becoming more familiar with Java's Collections framework so you can make the best decisions in future by yourself.
Arrays are not dynamic their size can't change dynamically and right now you aren't changing the same object, you are replacing smaller size object with larger size object
int[5] Arr = new int[5] ; // Create an array of size 5
Arr = new int[10] ;// you assigned the different objects. It is not the same object.
So, we can't change the size of the array dynamically. You can use ArrayList for the same.
But keep try !!!
Please take a look at java.util.ArrayList which is dynamically, it is part of the Collections framework. Making the Array dynamically should be slower and error-prone.
Have you heard about time complexity , do you know how much time complexity you are increasing, Every time you are copying old array element to new array let you have 1 million element in array then think about copying time of element of one array to another array.
One more thing i want to tell you, ArrayList implementation used same logic except new length that you are using .

Adding int to an array

First off don't call this a duplicate unless you actually find a thread that works for exactly what I'm trying to do, as I've gone through about 50 threads that aren't helping.
~Problem: I don't know how to correctly add an integer to an array like "private int test[] ={}"
~My code:
private int generatedList[] = {};
private int lastInt = 1;
private void startList() {
if (generatedList.length == 30000) {
System.out.println(generatedList);
} else {
generatedList[lastInt+1] = generatedList[lastInt];
lastInt++;
System.out.println(generatedList);
startList();
}
}
~What I'm trying to accomplish: if the length of the list is less than 30,000 add the last int to the array then lastInt++, so after looping say 5 times the list will print like this: 1,2,3,4,5
How do I add the "lastInt" to the generatedList[]?
Arrays in Java are of a fixed size. The one you declared is of size 0, in fact. You won't be able to append to the end of it. Check out the ArrayList class, it will help you.
private ArrayList<Integer> generatedList;
...
generatedList.add(1234);
However, there is a bigger problem with your code. Your recursive implementation is going to be extremely slow, and it doesn't have an initialization for the first value in the array. It would be much better to use a primitive array of fixed size 30,000, and simply loop from 0..30k and fill in the values by index. I leave that as an exercise for you since this is probably related to some homework assignment :)
Arrays are not extendible. This is by design.
I suggest using an ArrayList. It's like an array (can index any property, works almost as fast in terms of runtime complexity) but has the additional properties that you can add and remove items.
The easy way to do this is to change generatedList into ArrayList<Integer>. If you want to preserve an array, you can always create a new array and copy over the contents. (ArrayLists are easier, though.)
Your trying to add new elements to an array of size zero size. Use an arraylist or specify array size first.

In java to remove an element in an array can you set it to null?

I am trying to make a remove method that works on an array implementation of a list.
Can I set the the duplicate element to null to remove it? Assuming that the list is in order.
ArrayList a = new ArrayList[];
public void removeduplicates(){
for(a[i].equals(a[i+1]){
a[i+1] = null;
}
a[i+1] = a[i];
}
No you can't remove an element from an array, as in making it shorter. Java arrays are fixed-size. You need to use an ArrayList for that.
If you set an element to null, the array will still have the same size, but with a null reference at that point.
// Let's say a = [0,1,2,3,4] (Integer[])
a[2] = null;
// Now a = [0,1,null,3,4]
Yes, you can set elements in an array to null, but code like a[i].equals(a[i+1]) will fail with a NullPointerException if the array contains nulls, so you just have to be more careful if you know that your array may contain nulls. It also doesn't change the size of the array so you will be wasting memory if you remove large numbers of elements. Fixed size arrays are generally not a good way to store data if you are often adding and removing elements - as you can guess from their name.
Can I set the the duplicate element to null to remove it?
You can set an element of the array null but this doesn't remove the element of the array... it just set the element to null (I feel like repeating the first sentence).
You should return a cleaned copy of the array instead. One way to do this would be to use an intermediary java.util.Set:
String[] data = {"A", "C", "B", "D", "A", "B", "E", "D", "B", "C"};
// Convert to a list to create a Set object
List<String> list = Arrays.asList(data);
Set<String> set = new HashSet<String>(list);
// Create an array to convert the Set back to array.
String[] result = new String[set.size()];
set.toArray(result);
Or maybe just use a java.util.Set :)
Is this a homework question?
Your problem is analogous to the stream processing program uniq: Preserve -- by way of copying -- any element that doesn't match the one before it. It only removes all duplicates if the sequence is sorted. Otherwise, it only removes contiguous duplicates. That means you need to buffer at most one element (even if by reference) to use as a comparison predicate when deciding whether to keep an element occurring later in the sequence.
The only special case is the first element. As it should never match any preceding element, you can try to initialize your buffered "previous" element to some value that's out of the domain of the sequence type, or you can special-case your iteration with a "first element" flag or explicitly copy the first element outside the iteration -- minding the case where the sequence is empty, too.
Note that I did not propose you provide this operation as a destructive in-place algorithm. That would only be appropriate with a structure like a linked list with constant-time overhead for removing an element. As others note here, removing an element from an array or vector involves shuffling down successor elements to "fill the hole", which is of time complexity n in the number of successors.
The straight-forward answer to your question is that setting an array or ArrayList element to null gives you a null entry in the array or ArrayList. This is not the same thing as removing the element. If just means that a[i] or a.get(i) will return null rather than the original element.
The code in the question is garbled. If you are going to use an ArrayList, the simplisitic solution would be something like this:
ArrayList a = new ArrayList();
public void removeduplicates() {
for (int i = 0; i < a.size() - 1; ) {
if (a.get(i).equals(a.get(i + 1)) {
a.remove(i);
} else {
i++;
}
}
}
but in the worst case, that is O(N**2) because each call to remove copies all elements at indexes greater than the current value of i.
If you want to improve the performance, do something like this:
public ArrayList removeduplicates() {
ArrayList res = new ArrayList(a.size());
if (a.size() == 0) {
return res;
}
res.add(a.get(0));
for (int i = 1; i < a.size(); i++) {
if (!a.get(i - 1).equals(a.get(i)) {
res.add(a.get(i));
}
}
return res;
}
(This is a quick hack. I'm sure it could be tidied up.)
Your code example was quite confusing. With ArrayList[] you showed an array of ArrayList objects.
Assuming that you're talking about just the java.util.ArrayList, then the most easy way to get rid of duplicates is to use a java.util.Set instead, as mentioned by others. If you really want to have, startwith, or end up with a List for some reasons then do:
List withDuplicates = new ArrayList() {{ add("foo"); add("bar"); add("waa"); add("foo"); add("bar"); }}; // Would rather have used Arrays#asList() here, but OK.
List withoutDuplicates = new ArrayList(new LinkedHashSet(withDuplicates));
System.out.println(withoutDuplicates); // [foo, bar, waa]
The LinkedHashSet is chosen here because it maintains the ordering. If you don't worry about the ordering, a HashSet is faster. But if you actually want to have it sorted, a TreeSet may be more of value.
On the other hand, if you're talking about a real array and you want to filter duplicates out of this without help of the (great) Collections framework, then you'd need to create another array and add items one by one to it while you check if the array doesn't already contain the to-be-added item. Here's a basic example (without help of Arrays.sort() and Arrays.binarySearch() which would have eased the task more, but then you would end up with a sorted array):
String[] array1 = new String[] {"foo", "bar", "foo", "waa", "bar"};
String[] array2 = new String[0];
loop:for (String array1item : array1) {
for (String array2item : array2) {
if (array1item.equals(array2item)) {
continue loop;
}
}
int length = array2.length;
String[] temp = new String[length + 1];
System.arraycopy(array2, 0, temp, 0, length);
array2 = temp;
array2[length] = array1item;
}
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(array2)); // [foo, bar, waa]
Hope this gives new insights.
If you are implementing your own list and you have decide to use a basic primitives storage mechanism. So using an array (rather than an arraylist) could be where you start.
For a simple implementation, your strategy should consider the following.
Decide how to expand your list. You could instantiate data blocks of 200 cells at a time. You would only use 199 because you might want to use the last cell to store the next allocation block.
Such linked list are horrible so you might decide to use a master block to store all the instances of blocks. You instantiate a master block of size 100. You start with one data block of 200 and store its ref in master[0]. As the list grows in size, you progressively store the ref of each new data blocks in master[1] .... master[99] and then you might have to recreate the master list to store 200 references.
For the reason of efficiency, when you delete a cell, you should not actually exterminate it immediately. You let it hang around until enough deletion has occurred for you to recreate the block.
You need to somehow flag a cell has been deleted. So the answer is obvious, of course you can set it to null because you are the king, the emperor, the dictator who decides how a cell is flagged as deleted. Using a null is a great and usual way. If you use null, then you have to disallow nulls from being inserted as data into your list class. You would have to throw an exception when such an attempt is made.
You have to design and write a garbage collection routine and strategy to compact the list by recreating blocks to remove nullified cells en mass. The JVM would not know those are "deleted" data.
You need a register to count the number of deletions and if that threshold is crossed, garbage collection would kick in. Or you have the programmer decide to invoke a compact() method. Because if deletions are sparse and distributed across various data blocks, might as well leave the null/deleted cells hang around. You could only merge adjacent blocks and only if the sum of holes in both blocks count up to 200, obviously.
Perhaps, when data is appended to a list, you deliberately leave null holes in between the data. It's like driving down the street and you see house addresses incremented by ten because the the city has decided that if people wish to build new houses in between existing houses. In that way you don't have to recreate and split a block every time an insertion occurs.
Therefore, the answer is obvious to yourself, of course you can write null to signify a cell is deleted, because it is your strategy in managing the list class.
No, an array element containing a null is still there, it just doesn't contain any useful value.
You could try moving every element from further down in the list up by 1 element to fill the gap, then you have a gap at the end of the array - the array will not shrink from doing this!
If you're doing this a lot, you can use System.arraycopy() to do this packing operation quickly.
Use ArrayList.remove(int index).
if(a[i].equals(foo()))
a.remove(i)
But be careful when using for-loops and removing objects in arrays.
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/util/ArrayList.html

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