(chapter 4) A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java

1A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Frank NIELSEN nielsen@lix.polytechnique.fr A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java Chapter 4: Arrays and strings

2A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Why do we need arrays? ● To handle many variables at once ● Processing many data or generating many results ● In mathematics, we are familiar with variables with indices: In most languages, indices start at zero (and not one). ...Just a convention

3A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Declaring arrays in Java For a given type, TYPE[ ] is the type of arrays storing elements of type TYPE. ● For arrays declared within the scope of functions: ● int [ ] x; ● boolean [ ] prime; ● double [ ] coordinates; ● float [ ] [ ] matrix; ● For arrays declared in the body of a class, use the keyword static: (array variables can be used by any function of the class) ● static int [ ] x; ● static boolean [ ] prime;

4A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Building and initializing arrays Observe: static boolean prime[ ]={ false, true, true, true, false, true, false, true, false, false }; but not static boolean prime[10]={ false, true, true, true, false, true, false, true, false, false };

5A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Building and initializing arrays ● Declare array with the reserved keyword new ● Specify the size of the array at built time ● Arrays can be declared and initialized at once too: ● int [ ] x; ● x=new int [32]; ● boolean [ ] prime = new boolean[16]; ● Arrays initialized by enumerating all its values: int [ ] prime={2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19};

6A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Size of arrays Size of arrays is given by the member function length: prime.length; System.out.println(prime.length); Size of arrays fixed for once, cannot be changed: array.length=23; // Generate an error

8A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Index range of arrays and exceptions Powerful mechanism of modern languages (Java, C++) If index is out of range, an exception is raised on the fly: ArrayIndexOutOfBounds Out of range accesses may not be detected by the compiler: Bug that yields termination or system crash ... However, fortunately, Java can catch exceptions too.

11A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen The concept of references An array is allocated as a single contiguous memory block Java is managing memory so you do not have to free it once the array is not used anymore: garbage collector An array variable is, in fact, a reference to the array This reference of the array is the symbolic address of the first element (index 0) Thus, when we write... int [ ] v = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4}; int [ ] t =v; t[2]++; System.out.println(t[2]++); ... the elements of the array v are not copied verbatim to t. Only the reference!!!

13A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Functions & arrays Functions and procedures can have arrays as arguments. (remember that array types are: TypeElement[ ]) Example: Function that returns the minimum of an array of integers

15A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Array arguments in functions A variable that has a type array is a reference to the array (the memory address of the first element) Therefore an argument of type array does not copy all array elements in the memory allocated for the function, but rather allocate a single memory reference: a machine word. static void MyFunction(int [ ] x) MyFunction(v); Only the reference of v is copied to the memory allocated for the function MyFunction.

16A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Array arguments in functions Thus we can modify the inside a function the contents of the array: the values of the elements of the array.

18A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Arrays of arrays... So far, we described linear array (1D). What about matrices (2D arrays)? A bidimensional array (n,m) consists of n lines, each of which is an array of m elements int [ ] [ ] matrix; matrix=new int[n][m]; By default, at initialization, the array is filled up with zero Change the contents of 2D arrays using 2 nested loops: for(int i=0; i<n; i++) for(int j=0; j<m;j++) matrix[i][j]=i*j+1;

20A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Dichotomic search Also called binary search algorithm Assume we are given a sorted array of size n: array[0] < array[1] < ... < array[n-1] and a query key p Seek whether there is an element in the array that has value p That is, give a function that return the index of the element in the array with value p, or that returns -1 otherwise.

21A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Dichotomic search: Think recursion! ● Start with a search interval [left, right] with left=0 and right=n-1 ● Let m denote the middle of this interval: m=(left+right)/2 ● If array[m]=p then we are done, and we return m; ● If array[m] <a, then if the solution exists it is in [m+1,right] ● If array[m]>a, then if the solution exists it is in [left,m+1] ● The search algorithm terminates if left>right, we return -1;

23A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Strings: Basic objects in Java ● A string of character is an object with type String ● A variable of type String is a reference on that object: String school= ''Ecole Polytechnique''; String vars=school; ● Once built, a string object cannot be modified ● Beware: use only for moderate length strings, otherwise use the class StringBuffer

24A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Class String: Some methods A method is a function or procedure on an object class Method Length() : gives the number of characters String s= ''anticonstitutionnellement''; System.out.println(s.length()); Method equals(): s1.equals(s2): Predicate that returns true if and only if the two strings s1 and s2 are made of the same sequence of characters. String s1=''Poincare''; String s2=TC.lireMotSuivant(); System.out.println(s1.equals(s2)); Beware: s1==s2 is different! It compares the reference of the strings. (Physical versus logical equality test)

26A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Class String: More methods Method charAt(): s.charAt(i) gives the character at the (i+1)th position in string s. String s= ''3.14159265''; System.out.println(s.charAt(1)); Method compareTo(): u.compareTo(v) compares lexicographically the strings u with v. String u=''lien'', v=''lit'', w=''litterie''; System.out.println(u.compareTo(v)); System.out.println(v.compareTo(w));

28A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java © 2009 Frank Nielsen Demystifying the main function class ClassName { public static void main(String[ ] args) { ... } } Function main has an array of string of characters as arguments These strings are stored in args[0], args[1], ... ... when calling java main s0 s1 s2 s3 Use Integer.parseInt() to convert a string into an integer

(chapter 4) A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java

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(chapter 4) A Concise and Practical Introduction to Programming Algorithms in Java