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why java has introduced vararg in java 6 when we already have Array and collections?
Hi All,
I was going through some new concepts introduced after java 4 and i am not sure why variable argument x... y... got introduced in java, was it really needed?? I mean when we already have many collection classes and Array then why to come up with something new. Also some what i did not like the syntax of it, i mean what dot dot dot ... couldn't they find out something better to represent it?
Thanks
Related threads:
Re: why java has introduced vararg in java 6 when we already have Array and collections?
Think about it the other way: why not? It can be handy in many situations - the printf method of PrintStream is a good example: it would be quite a hassle to have to create an array or Collection every time I wanted to use this method. As for syntax, the ellipsis (...) is a common syntax in many other programming languages, so there's no reason to use something different.
Re: why java has introduced vararg in java 6 when we already have Array and collections?
Well, I agree with the above, why not? Which would you rather type?
orfunctionThatDoesThingsThatAreUsefulForThings(new int[]{ 1, 2, 69, 5})
functionThatDoesThingsThatAreUsefulForThings(1, 2, 69, 5)
Re: why java has introduced vararg in java 6 when we already have Array and collections?
Thanks for your reply. Above example looks ok if we have 4,5 or at the max 10 input params, but what if we have 100 params, isnt it a good idea to hold it in array or collection and iterate through...
Re: why java has introduced vararg in java 6 when we already have Array and collections?
If you ever see a coder adding 100 parameters to a method call - just kill him ;-)
But yeah you're right it would be way better. Varargs is just syntactic sugar for fast calls like reflective invocations but they are not introduced to get rid of arrays everywhere (at least the compiler generates the array creation / element assignment for you right before the method call). Varargs are just array parameters and the method itself is flagged as being a vararg-method so that the last parameter is taken into account as a vararg one.
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