length vs length method in java

length vs length method in java

In Java, ‘length’ and ‘length()’ are used to determine the size or length of different entities, but they are applied to different types of data and serve different purposes:

length vs length method in java

1. ‘length’:

  • ‘length’ is a property of arrays in Java.
  • It is used to determine the number of elements (or the size) of an array.
  • ‘length’ is a final variable, so it cannot be modified.
  • It is accessed directly on the array variable without parentheses.

Example
int[] numbers = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
int arrayLength = numbers.length; // Gets the length of the array

2. ‘length()’:

  • ‘length()’ is a method of the String class in Java.
  • It is used to determine the number of characters (or the length) of a string.
  • ‘length()’ is a method, so it must be called with parentheses.
  • It returns an integer representing the number of characters in the string.

Example
String str = "Hello, World!";
int stringLength = str.length(); // Gets the length of the string

In summary, ‘length’ is a property of arrays used to get the size of the array, while ‘length()’ is a method of the ‘String’ class used to get the length of a string by counting the number of characters.