Java - String and array references

Question

Just started to learn Java, and saw that both string and array are reference types. I don\'t understand the following issue:

    String a = \"a1\";
    String b          


        

Answer 1

So, reassignment is a different thing from modification.

If you have

String a = "foo";
String b = a;

then you have assigned b to refer to the same object as a. If you then do

b = "bananas";

then you haven't modified the string, you have reassigned b so it is no longer referring to the same object as a.

On the other hand

int[] c = { 1, 2, 3 };
int[] d = c;

Here again we have d assigned to refer to the same object (an array) as c. If you then do something like this:

d[0] = 10;

then you are modifying the contents of the array that both c and d refer to.