casting into primitive wrapper class

[Jan Groth]

hi there,
playing with the Collection Framework, I was wondering about the following issue:
What is the most efficient way (or: _any_ way but a loop) to cast a array of primitives
int myArray[] = {1,2,3,4,5}
into a array of Integer wrapper objects?
My goal was to be able to handle myArray[] as a Collection.
Arrays.asList(Object[] a)
looked like a appropriate method to me. But, as already quoted, I had to cast it manually to a help-array
Integer myHelpArray[]
which worked out, but doesn't look too efficient to me ;-)
thanks for any help,
Jan

[Dirk Schreckmann]

Welcome to JavaRanch, Jan!
We beginners aren't too interested in alleged efficiencies, especially as premature optimization is the root of all evil [Knuth]. We're more concerned with clarity of code.
Moving this to the Performance forum...
[ February 03, 2004: Message edited by: Dirk Schreckmann ]

[Jan Groth]

Hey Dirk,
thanks for answering so fast!
As english is not my mother tongue, it seems to me that I put my question a bit too much into the "hey, how can I get the last edge of performance out of my code?"-corner.
Considering myself as a beginner with java, let me try to put my intention behind the question in other words:
I have an array of primitves. I'd love to transform it into a Collection, to do all the fancy collection-stuff with it.
The only method I found which vaguely does what I want is "Arrays.asList(Object[] a)".
My first question: Is this the only way? Is this okay or does it look too complicated or so? Are there other (better?) methods?
When I'm using this method, I need an array of Objects, not of primitives. The only way I found to get this is to cast element per element from "int" to "Integer".
My second question: Is looping through the whole array the only way? -> If I do so I could also fill a Collection with my array's elements...
From my practise in other languages and my impression of Java I feel that there might be a simple one-liner of code, recieving my array of primitives and returning a object of a class that implements Collection.
If you say "no, the way is definitely okay", I'll be more then happy. Otherwise, just let me know how you would have solved this "problem"
;-)
Greetings from Berlin, Germany
Jan

[William Brogden]

No there is no one-liner to change an array of primitives to an array of wrapper class objects.
Bill

[Don Kiddick]

The best way would be ( in pseudo code ):
Create List
For Each Element In Primitive Array
Convert Element To Wrapped Element
Add Wrapped Element To List
does that help ?

[Jan Groth]

thanks for answering.
So I summarize:
- There is no one-step way to get a array of primitives into a collection
- The way I tried to do it was okay

Thanks again !
bye,
Jan

[Anjaiah Setty]

Hello There,

I need the opposite -- a "long []" from a "Long []".

A method needs to return a long [] from a DB/SQL query. Inside the method, we create an ArrayList<Long>. Now what is an easy way to convert this ArrayList to a "long []" ?

I could NOT find anything in jakarta commons/ClassUtils.

Thanks for any pointers.

BR,
~A

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

There's no better way than to do the obvious:

ArrayList<Long> list = ...
long[] array = new long[list.size()];
int index = 0;
for (Long w : list)
  array[index++] = w;