How to convert an ArrayList containing Integers to primitive int array?

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/718554

Question

I'm trying to convert an ArrayList containing Integer objects to primitive int[] with the following piece of code, but it is throwing compile time error. Is it possible to convert in Java?

List<Integer> x =  new ArrayList<Integer>();
int[] n = (int[])x.toArray(int[x.size()]);
Was it helpful?

Solution

You can convert, but I don't think there's anything built in to do it automatically:

public static int[] convertIntegers(List<Integer> integers)
{
    int[] ret = new int[integers.size()];
    for (int i=0; i < ret.length; i++)
    {
        ret[i] = integers.get(i).intValue();
    }
    return ret;
}

(Note that this will throw a NullPointerException if either integers or any element within it is null.)

EDIT: As per comments, you may want to use the list iterator to avoid nasty costs with lists such as LinkedList:

public static int[] convertIntegers(List<Integer> integers)
{
    int[] ret = new int[integers.size()];
    Iterator<Integer> iterator = integers.iterator();
    for (int i = 0; i < ret.length; i++)
    {
        ret[i] = iterator.next().intValue();
    }
    return ret;
}

OTHER TIPS

If you are using there's also another way to do this.

int[] arr = list.stream().mapToInt(i -> i).toArray();

What it does is:

  • getting a Stream<Integer> from the list
  • obtaining an IntStream by mapping each element to itself (identity function), unboxing the int value hold by each Integer object (done automatically since Java 5)
  • getting the array of int by calling toArray

You could also explicitly call intValue via a method reference, i.e:

int[] arr = list.stream().mapToInt(Integer::intValue).toArray();

It's also worth mentioning that you could get a NullPointerException if you have any null reference in the list. This could be easily avoided by adding a filtering condition to the stream pipeline like this:

                       //.filter(Objects::nonNull) also works
int[] arr = list.stream().filter(i -> i != null).mapToInt(i -> i).toArray();

Example:

List<Integer> list = Arrays.asList(1, 2, 3, 4);
int[] arr = list.stream().mapToInt(i -> i).toArray(); //[1, 2, 3, 4]

list.set(1, null); //[1, null, 3, 4]
arr = list.stream().filter(i -> i != null).mapToInt(i -> i).toArray(); //[1, 3, 4]

Apache Commons has a ArrayUtils class, which has a method toPrimitive() that does exactly this.

import org.apache.commons.lang.ArrayUtils;
...
    List<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();
    list.add(new Integer(1));
    list.add(new Integer(2));
    int[] intArray = ArrayUtils.toPrimitive(list.toArray(new Integer[0]));

However, as Jon showed, it is pretty easy to do this by yourself instead of using external libraries.

Google Guava

Google Guava provides a neat way to do this by calling Ints.toArray.

List<Integer> list = ...;
int[] values = Ints.toArray(list);

I believe iterating using the List's iterator is a better idea, as list.get(i) can have poor performance depending on the List implementation:

private int[] buildIntArray(List<Integer> integers) {
    int[] ints = new int[integers.size()];
    int i = 0;
    for (Integer n : integers) {
        ints[i++] = n;
    }
    return ints;
}

using Dollar should be quite simple:

List<Integer> list = $(5).toList(); // the list 0, 1, 2, 3, 4  
int[] array = $($(list).toArray()).toIntArray();

I'm planning to improve the DSL in order to remove the intermediate toArray() call

If you're using Eclipse Collections, you can use the collectInt() method to switch from an object container to a primitive int container.

List<Integer> integers = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList(1, 2, 3, 4, 5));
MutableIntList intList =
  ListAdapter.adapt(integers).collectInt(i -> i);
Assert.assertArrayEquals(new int[]{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}, intList.toArray());

If you can convert your ArrayList to a FastList, you can get rid of the adapter.

Assert.assertArrayEquals(
  new int[]{1, 2, 3, 4, 5},
  Lists.mutable.with(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
    .collectInt(i -> i).toArray());

Note: I am a committer for Eclipse collections.

It bewilders me that we encourage one-off custom methods whenever a perfectly good, well used library like Apache Commons has solved the problem already. Though the solution is trivial if not absurd, it is irresponsible to encourage such a behavior due to long term maintenance and accessibility.

Just go with Apache Commons

You can simply copy it to an array:

int[] arr = new int[list.size()];
for(int i = 0; i < list.size(); i++) {
    arr[i] = list.get(i);
}

Not too fancy; but, hey, it works...

This code segment is working for me, try this:

Integer[] arr = x.toArray(new Integer[x.size()]);

Worth to mention ArrayList should be declared like this:

ArrayList<Integer> list = new ArrayList<>();

   List<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();

    list.add(1);
    list.add(2);

    int[] result = null;
    StringBuffer strBuffer = new StringBuffer();
    for (Object o : list) {
        strBuffer.append(o);
        result = new int[] { Integer.parseInt(strBuffer.toString()) };
        for (Integer i : result) {
            System.out.println(i);
        }
        strBuffer.delete(0, strBuffer.length());
    }

Integer[] arr = (Integer[]) x.toArray(new Integer[x.size()]);

access arr like normal int[].

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