How do I remove objects from an array in Java?

Question

Given an array of n Objects, let\'s say it is an array of strings, and it has the following values:

foo[0] = \"a\";
foo[1]          


        

Answer 1

It depends on what you mean by "remove"? An array is a fixed size construct - you can't change the number of elements in it. So you can either a) create a new, shorter, array without the elements you don't want or b) assign the entries you don't want to something that indicates their 'empty' status; usually null if you are not working with primitives.

In the first case create a List from the array, remove the elements, and create a new array from the list. If performance is important iterate over the array assigning any elements that shouldn't be removed to a list, and then create a new array from the list. In the second case simply go through and assign null to the array entries.