Questions
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What is the difference between a String and a Character Array?
Difficulty: 1/10
String vs Character Array
A character array is a mutable sequence of characters, while a String is a higher-level string abstraction whose behavior depends on the programming language. In Java, for example, String is immutable, whereas char[] is mutable.
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A String provides higher-level operations such as searching, slicing, comparison, and concatenation.
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A character array provides direct mutable access to individual characters.
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Java String objects are immutable.
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A char[] can be modified after creation.
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Character arrays can sometimes be preferable when sensitive character data must be explicitly cleared from memory, although memory clearing has platform-specific limitations.
Follow-up Questions
- Why is Java String immutable?
- When would you use char[] instead of String?