How can I concatenate two arrays in Java?

Question

I need to concatenate two String arrays in Java.

void f(String[] first, String[] second) {
    String[] both = ???
}

What is t

Answer 1

Or with the beloved Guava:

String[] both = ObjectArrays.concat(first, second, String.class);

Also, there are versions for primitive arrays:

• Booleans.concat(first, second)
• Bytes.concat(first, second)
• Chars.concat(first, second)
• Doubles.concat(first, second)
• Shorts.concat(first, second)
• Ints.concat(first, second)
• Longs.concat(first, second)
• Floats.concat(first, second)

Answer 2

Please forgive me for adding yet another version to this already long list. I looked at every answer and decided that I really wanted a version with just one parameter in the signature. I also added some argument checking to benefit from early failure with sensible info in case of unexpected input.

@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
public static <T> T[] concat(T[]... inputArrays) {
  if(inputArrays.length < 2) {
    throw new IllegalArgumentException("inputArrays must contain at least 2 arrays");
  }

  for(int i = 0; i < inputArrays.length; i++) {
    if(inputArrays[i] == null) {
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("inputArrays[" + i + "] is null");
    }
  }

  int totalLength = 0;

  for(T[] array : inputArrays) {
    totalLength += array.length;
  }

  T[] result = (T[]) Array.newInstance(inputArrays[0].getClass().getComponentType(), totalLength);

  int offset = 0;

  for(T[] array : inputArrays) {
    System.arraycopy(array, 0, result, offset, array.length);

    offset += array.length;
  }

  return result;
}

Answer 3

Using Java 8+ streams you can write the following function:

private static String[] concatArrays(final String[]... arrays) {
    return Arrays.stream(arrays)
         .flatMap(Arrays::stream)
         .toArray(String[]::new);
}

Answer 4

I found a one-line solution from the good old Apache Commons Lang library.
ArrayUtils.addAll(T[], T...)

Code:

String[] both = ArrayUtils.addAll(first, second);

Answer 5

Wow! lot of complex answers here including some simple ones that depend on external dependencies. how about doing it like this:

String [] arg1 = new String{"a","b","c"};
String [] arg2 = new String{"x","y","z"};

ArrayList<String> temp = new ArrayList<String>();
temp.addAll(Arrays.asList(arg1));
temp.addAll(Arrays.asList(arg2));
String [] concatedArgs = temp.toArray(new String[arg1.length+arg2.length]);

Answer 6

A simple variation allowing the joining of more than one array:

public static String[] join(String[]...arrays) {

    final List<String> output = new ArrayList<String>();

    for(String[] array : arrays) {
        output.addAll(Arrays.asList(array));
    }

    return output.toArray(new String[output.size()]);
}