Arrays are Objects in java. If you have initialized your array with a size(actually length), you cannot modify it. You can create a new Array with a varying size (as you are currently doing in the function ) and copy all the values from the Old Array to the new Array. In your case, you have 2 objects and 3 references. If you want to access the Array of greater size in the calling function , make the function return the reference of the Array of greater size.