Array Declarations

Java has two ways in which one can declare an array, one which is backwards compatible with the notation used in C & C++ and another which is generally accepted as being clearer to read, C# uses only the latter array declaration syntax.

C# Code

  int[] iArray = new int[100]; //valid, iArray is an object of type int[] 
  float fArray[] = new float[100]; //ERROR: Won't compile  

Java Code

  int[] iArray = new int[100]; //valid, iArray is an object of type int[] 
  float fArray[] = new float[100]; //valid, but isn't clear that fArray is an object of type float[] 

Arrays Can Be Jagged

In languages like C and C++, each subarray of a multidimensional array must have the same dimensions. In Java and C# arrays do not have to be uniform because jagged arrays can be created as one-dimensional arrays of arrays. In a jagged array the contents of the array are arrays which may hold instances of a type or references to other arrays. For this reason the rows and columns in a jagged array need not have uniform length as can be seen from the following code snippet:

 int [][]myArray = new int[2][]; 
  myArray[0] = new int[3]; 
  myArray[1] = new int[9];

The above code snippet is valid for both C# and Java.