---

Array of charcaters: another way to represent "string"

---

• The char data type
  • Recall that:

    The type char is a 2 byte integer that contains a positive value which uses the Unicode to represent a character Example: char a; a = 66; // 66 is the Unicode for 'B' System.out.println( a ); // Will print: B int i; i = 'B'; System.out.println( i ); // Will print: 66

  ---

  ---

• Array of characters
  • Following the same syntax, we can define an array of char as follows:

    char[] A; A = new char[3]; // Array of 3 character variables A[0] = 'a'; // Each array element is a char typed variable A[1] = 'b'; A[2] = 'H';

    Result:

    ---

  • The short hand definition is also the same:

    char[] A = { 'a', 'b', 'H' }; // short hand System.out.println( a[0] ); // Prints: a System.out.println( a[1] ); // Prints: b System.out.println( a[2] ); // Prints: H

  ---

  ---

• Character array: just another way to represent a string....
  • If you look carefully, there is not much difference between:

    a string an array of characters

    because: both are just a (ordered) sequence of characters

    ---

  • In fact:

    Many programming languages - such as C and C++ - do not provide the String data type. They use character arrays to represent strings

    We will discuss this fact in more details in the next webpage....