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Copying an array
The Java standard library provides a static method, System.arraycopy( ), which can make much faster copies of an array than if you use a for loop to perform the copy by hand. System.arraycopy( ) is overloaded to handle all types. Here’s an example that manipulates arrays of int:
//: c11:CopyingArrays.java
// Using System.arraycopy()
import com.bruceeckel.simpletest.*;
import com.bruceeckel.util.*;
import java.util.*;
public class CopyingArrays {
private static Test monitor = new Test();
public static void main(String[] args) {
int[] i = new int[7];
int[] j = new int[10];
Arrays.fill(i, 47);
Arrays.fill(j, 99);
System.out.println("i = " + Arrays2.toString(i));
System.out.println("j = " + Arrays2.toString(j));
System.arraycopy(i, 0, j, 0, i.length);
System.out.println("j = " + Arrays2.toString(j));
int[] k = new int[5];
Arrays.fill(k, 103);
System.arraycopy(i, 0, k, 0, k.length);
System.out.println("k = " + Arrays2.toString(k));
Arrays.fill(k, 103);
System.arraycopy(k, 0, i, 0, k.length);
System.out.println("i = " + Arrays2.toString(i));
// Objects:
Integer[] u = new Integer[10];
Integer[] v = new Integer[5];
Arrays.fill(u, new Integer(47));
Arrays.fill(v, new Integer(99));
System.out.println("u = " + Arrays.asList(u));
System.out.println("v = " + Arrays.asList(v));
System.arraycopy(v, 0, u, u.length/2, v.length);
System.out.println("u = " + Arrays.asList(u));
monitor.expect(new String[] {
"i = [47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47]",
"j = [99, 99, 99, 99, 99, 99, 99, 99, 99, 99]",
"j = [47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 99, 99, 99]",
"k = [47, 47, 47, 47, 47]",
"i = [103, 103, 103, 103, 103, 47, 47]",
"u = [47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47]",
"v = [99, 99, 99, 99, 99]",
"u = [47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 99, 99, 99, 99, 99]"
});
}
} ///:~
The arguments to arraycopy( ) are the source array, the offset into the source array from whence to start copying, the destination array, the offset into the destination array where the copying begins, and the number of elements to copy. Naturally, any violation of the array boundaries will cause an exception.
The example shows that both primitive arrays and object arrays can be copied. However, if you copy arrays of objects, then only the references get copied—there’s no duplication of the objects themselves. This is called a shallow copy (see Appendix A).
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