99

How can I find an index of a certain value in a Java array of type int?

I tried using Arrays.binarySearch on my unsorted array, it only sometimes gives the correct answer.

8
  • 16
    Binary search will never work on an unsorted array. Commented May 30, 2011 at 1:57
  • Then can you suggest me something, how should i do it. Because if i sort the array, i loose track of indexes, and i need to know which index the value came from?? Commented May 30, 2011 at 1:59
  • EDIT: i forgot to add, i need to find array index for double values as well. Commented May 30, 2011 at 2:10
  • 1
    If you don't want to sort the array, just use a simple for loop to find the value. Commented May 30, 2011 at 2:11
  • 2
    It is generally good to read documentation of functions :) From binarySearch: "Searches the specified array of ... for the specified value using the binary search algorithm. The array must be sorted (as by the sort(long[]) method) prior to making this call. If it is not sorted, the results are undefined. ..." Commented May 30, 2011 at 2:12

19 Answers 19

146
Integer[] array = {1,2,3,4,5,6};

Arrays.asList(array).indexOf(4);

Note that this solution is threadsafe because it creates a new object of type List.

Also you don't want to invoke this in a loop or something like that since you would be creating a new object every time

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

8 Comments

Thanks but would it work for type double? Sorry i forgot to mention in the question, but i need to work this for double values as well. It works fine with ints though.
Yes it would, you don't have to change anything (but the array type obviously)
Actually the code doesn't work. Check Why is indexOf failing to find the object?
You need to convert array to Integer[] instead of int[]. primitive arrays are not autoboxed.
Is this really threadsafe? When I click through the source the List.asList() creates an ArrayList that is taking the the int array directly as data container (not copying)
|
28

Another option if you are using Guava Collections is Ints.indexOf

// Perfect storm:
final int needle = 42;
final int[] haystack = [1, 2, 3, 42];

// Spoiler alert: index == 3
final int index = Ints.indexOf(haystack, needle);

This is a great choice when space, time and code reuse are at a premium. It is also very terse.

Comments

19

A look at the API and it says you have to sort the array first

So:

Arrays.sort(array);
Arrays.binarySearch(array, value);

If you don't want to sort the array:

public int find(double[] array, double value) {
    for(int i=0; i<array.length; i++) 
         if(array[i] == value)
             return i;
}

2 Comments

+1 However it should be noted that Arrays.sort mutates the input and the original array will be modified.
thank you, the 2nd method somehow worked me after adding some logic for duplicate values with different indexes.
16

Copy this method into your class

 public int getArrayIndex(int[] arr,int value) {
        int k = -1;
        for(int i = 0;i < arr.length; i++){
            if(arr[i] == value){
                k = i;
                break;
            }
        }
    return k;
}

Call this method with pass two perameters Array and value and store its return value in a integer variable.

int indexNum = getArrayIndex(array,value);

Thank you

1 Comment

If the value isn't in the array the original code returns 0, pointing to the first element in the array even though it doesn't match the first element. I recommend rather than k=0, use k=-1. If the value is not found in the array, this will return -1.
9
// Using Apache Commons third party libary
import org.apache.commons.lang3.ArrayUtils;
ArrayUtils.indexOf(array, value);

// Using Guava third party library
import com.google.common.primitives.Ints;
Ints.indexOf(array, value);

// Using standard library
// Doesn't create a copy, just wraps original array.
// ONLY WORKS FOR ARRAYS OF OBJECT TYPES, NOT PRIMITIVES!
import java.util.Arrays; 
Arrays.asList(array).indexOf(value);

2 Comments

While this code may solve the question, including an explanation of how and why this solves the problem would really help to improve the quality of your post, and probably result in more up-votes. Remember that you are answering the question for readers in the future, not just the person asking now. Please edit your answer to add explanations and give an indication of what limitations and assumptions apply.
1) ArrayUtils.indexOf is what I'm looking for. 2) I don't know what Ints is. 3) Why would I want to convert to a list just to find an index? The code is easy, but terribly inefficient.
7

You can use modern Java to solve this problem. Please use the code below:

static int findIndexOf(int V, int[] arr) {
    return IntStream.range(0, arr.length)
                    .filter(i->arr[i]==V)
                    .findFirst()
                    .getAsInt();
}

3 Comments

Great! Thanks for sharing. It helps to learn about the new (optimized) built-in solutions within the language capabilities context.
@Simplicity's_Strength Your edit was half correct, half incorrect. Arrays do start at 0, but the second parameter to range is exclusive. Good catch on that first bug, though.
@RyanM That explains the java.util.NoSuchElementException i've had using this code. Well played Sir
4

You could convert it to a list, then use the indexOf method:

Arrays.asList(array).indexOf(1); 

http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/Arrays.html#asList(T...) http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/List.html#indexOf(java.lang.Object)

1 Comment

It is Arrays. ie Arrays.asList(array).indexOf(1);
3

You need to sort values before using binary search. Otherwise, the manual way is to try all ints in your tab.

public int getIndexOf( int toSearch, int[] tab )
{
  for( int i=0; i< tab.length ; i ++ )
    if( tab[ i ] == toSearch)
     return i;

  return -1;
}//met

An alternative method could be to map all index for each value in a map.

tab[ index ] = value;
if( map.get( value) == null || map.get( value) > index )
    map.put( value, index );

and then map.get(value) to get the index.

Regards, Stéphane

@pst, thanks for your comments. Can you post an other alternative method ?

1 Comment

This is one way, yes. However it is not the only way. The use of the boolean variable found here is useless (and not used) and should be removed. A +1 for showing "the manual loop method" though (stylistic and formatting issues aside).
3
    Integer[] arr = { 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 };
    List<Integer> arrlst = Arrays.asList(arr);
    System.out.println(arrlst.lastIndexOf(1));

1 Comment

Note, array must be Integer[], not int[]. At least, indexOf() works only with Integer
2

Simple:

public int getArrayIndex(int[] arr,int value) {
    for(int i=0;i<arr.length;i++)
        if(arr[i]==value) return i;
    return -1;
}

Comments

2

In case anyone is still looking for the answer-

  1. You can use ArrayUtils.indexOf() from the [Apache Commons Library][1].

  2. If you are using Java 8 you can also use the Strean API:

    public static int indexOf(int[] array, int valueToFind) {
        if (array == null) {
            return -1;
        }
        return IntStream.range(0, array.length)
                .filter(i -> valueToFind == array[i])
                .findFirst()
                .orElse(-1);
    }
    

    [1]: https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/javadocs/api-3.1/org/apache/commons/lang3/ArrayUtils.html#indexOf(int[],%20int)

Comments

1

The easiest way is to iterate. For example we want to find the minimum value of array and it's index:

public static Pair<Integer, Integer> getMinimumAndIndex(int[] array) {
        int min = array[0];
        int index = 0;
        for (int i = 1; i < array.length; i++) {
            if (array[i] < min) {
                min = array[i];
                index = i;
            }

            return new Pair<min, index>;

This way you test all array values and if some of them is minimum you also know minimums index. It can work the same with searching some value:

public static int indexOfNumber(int[] array) {
        int index = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
            if (array[i] == 77) {        // here you pass some value for example 77
                index = i;
            }
        }
        return index;
    }

Comments

1

I see a lot of solutions here that are not working. The most upvoted solution used an array of Integer, instead of offering a solution to an int array. It is as simple as this:

Arrays.stream(yourArray).boxed().toList().indexOf(number)

Comments

0
/**
     * Method to get the index of the given item from the list
     * @param stringArray
     * @param name
     * @return index of the item if item exists else return -1
     */
    public static int getIndexOfItemInArray(String[] stringArray, String name) {
        if (stringArray != null && stringArray.length > 0) {
            ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(stringArray));
            int index = list.indexOf(name);
            list.clear();
            return index;
        }
        return -1;
    }

1 Comment

The clear and the new ArrayList are unnecessary operations. Allocating a new ArrayList copies the whole array, which is pointless, because Arrays.asList already returns a List which has an indexOf method. Clearing the copy of the list is unnecessary, GC will take it away anyway.
0

You can do it like this:

 public class Test {

public static int Tab[]  = {33,44,55,66,7,88,44,11,23,45,32,12,95};
public static int search = 23;

public static void main(String[] args) {
    long stop = 0;
    long time = 0;
    long start = 0;
    start = System.nanoTime();
    int index = getIndexOf(search,Tab);
    stop = System.nanoTime();
    time = stop - start;
    System.out.println("equal to took in nano seconds ="+time);
    System.out.println("Index  of searched value is: "+index);
    System.out.println("De value of Tab with searched index is: "+Tab[index]);
    System.out.println("==========================================================");
    start = System.nanoTime();
    int Bindex = bitSearch(search,Tab);
    stop = System.nanoTime();
    time = stop - start;
    System.out.println("Binary search took nano seconds ="+time);
    System.out.println("Index  of searched value is: "+Bindex);
    System.out.println("De value of Tab with searched index is: "+Tab[Bindex]);
}



public static int getIndexOf( int toSearch, int[] tab ){
     int i = 0;
     while(!(tab[i] == toSearch) )
     {  i++; }
       return i; // or return tab[i];
   }
public static int bitSearch(int toSearch, int[] tab){
    int i = 0;
    for(;(toSearch^tab[i])!=0;i++){
    }
    return i;

}

}

Added a XOR :)

4 Comments

tab.equals(toSearch) is comparing an array with an int. Maybe tab[i] == toSearch instead.
This works thanks Mike... Google for binary search, some nice articles out there and its an interesting method
@Andre if you're trying to prove a point give them a level playing field (same order, same control flow): while (tab[i] != toSearch) i++; VS while ((tab[i] ^ toSearch) != 0) i++;.
In any case the this way of timing doesn't work, for me bitSearch is always faster than getIndexOf; while if I simply swap the calls to the two methods getIndexOf gets faster than bitSearch. This clearly demonstrates that the second one is always faster for some reason of JVM internals. You should be repeating the experiment many times (probably millions), averaging the values, discarding extreme values and doing a warmup that is very similar to the test.
0

In the main method using for loops: -the third for loop in my example is the answer to this question. -in my example I made an array of 20 random integers, assigned a variable the smallest number, and stopped the loop when the location of the array reached the smallest value while counting the number of loops.

import java.util.Random;
public class scratch {
    public static void main(String[] args){
        Random rnd = new Random();
        int randomIntegers[] = new int[20];
        double smallest = randomIntegers[0];
        int location = 0;

        for(int i = 0; i < randomIntegers.length; i++){             // fills array with random integers
            randomIntegers[i] = rnd.nextInt(99) + 1;
            System.out.println(" --" + i + "-- " + randomIntegers[i]);
        }

        for (int i = 0; i < randomIntegers.length; i++){            // get the location of smallest number in the array 
            if(randomIntegers[i] < smallest){
                smallest = randomIntegers[i];                 
            }
        }

        for (int i = 0; i < randomIntegers.length; i++){                
            if(randomIntegers[i] == smallest){                      //break the loop when array location value == <smallest>
                break;
            }
            location ++;
        }
        System.out.println("location: " + location + "\nsmallest: " + smallest);
    }
}

Code outputs all the numbers and their locations, and the location of the smallest number followed by the smallest number.

Comments

0

Binary search: Binary search can also be used to find the index of the array element in an array. But the binary search can only be used if the array is sorted. Java provides us with an inbuilt function which can be found in the Arrays library of Java which will rreturn the index if the element is present, else it returns -1. The complexity will be O(log n). Below is the implementation of Binary search.

public static int findIndex(int arr[], int t) { 
   int index = Arrays.binarySearch(arr, t); 
   return (index < 0) ? -1 : index; 
} 

Comments

-1
static int[] getIndex(int[] data, int number) {
    int[] positions = new int[data.length];
    if (data.length > 0) {
        int counter = 0;
        for(int i =0; i < data.length; i++) {
            if(data[i] == number){
                positions[counter] = i;
                counter++;
            }
        }
    }
    return positions;
}

Comments

-2
Integer[] array = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6};

for (int i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
    if (array[i] == 4) {
        system.out.println(i);
        break;
    }
}

1 Comment

Duplicated answer.

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