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Juan Sedano
Juan Sedano

Posted on • Originally published at jsedano.dev on

Dynamic array

My notes on Dynamic array with an implementation in Java.

You can find the complete code for this and other data structures here: data structures and algorithms

A dynamic array is a data structure that uses a normal array but allows to increase the size (and in some cases decrease it) to hold more elements.

Common Operations for an array list includes:

Operation Complexity
get(indexOfElement) O(1)
add(value) O(1)
insert(index, value) O(n)
delete(value) O(n)

This is the add operation

/**
* adds a value at the end of the array
* - puts a value at size and then increases size by 1
* - if size is equals to the inner array size we need to grow the inner
* array, we achieve this by instanciating a new array doubling the size
* of the previous array and we copy the elements to the array.
* O(1) amortised (because we dont enlarge at every insertion)
**/
public void add(T value) {
     if (size == innerArray.length) {
         T newArray[] = (T[]) new Object[innerArray.length * 2];
         System.arraycopy(innerArray, 0, newArray, 0, innerArray.length);
         innerArray = newArray;
     }
     innerArray[size] = value;
     size++;
}
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And the remove operation

/**
* removes a value at any valid index and moves other values one position
* O(n)
**/
public void remove(int index) {
    if (index < 0 || index >= size) {
        throw new IndexOutOfBoundsException();
    }
    for(int i = index + 1; i < size; i++) {
        innerArray[i - 1] = innerArray[i];
    }
    size--;
}
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Other operations are very similar to a normal array.

Download the complete code for this and other data structures here: data structures and algorithms

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