Array or List in Java. Which is faster?

Question

I have to keep thousands of strings in memory to be accessed serially in Java. Should I store them in an array or should I use some kind of List ?

Since arrays keep

Answer 1

Remember that an ArrayList encapsulates an array, so there is little difference compared to using a primitive array (except for the fact that a List is much easier to work with in java).

The pretty much the only time it makes sense to prefer an array to an ArrayList is when you are storing primitives, i.e. byte, int, etc and you need the particular space-efficiency you get by using primitive arrays.