Array of Objects Memory Allocation(Stack And Heap)

Question

I have initialised an array of class objects, I'm curious about how they're allocated in memory(stack and heap), I found a piece of code from a textbook, it draws the memory allocation on the left below.

My Question is: why the memory allocation is not the one I draw on the right, in the code below, new Person[]{new Person("Simon", 20)...}, the new Person object would assign its memory address to the per[0],however, the per[0] is created in the heap when Person[] per = new Person[3] is executed.

Initialization of an array of class objects

 class Person {
        private String name;
        private int age;
        public Person(String name, int age) {
            this.name = name;
            this.age = age;
        }
    }

    public class Main {
        public static void main(String[] args) {
            Person[] per = new Person[]{new Person("Simon", 20), new Person("John", 21), new Person("Willy", 22)};
        }
    }

Peter Lawrey · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-07 08:55:35Z

1

why the memory allocation is not the one I draw on the right,

It is on the right, but if you were to use the value

per

or

per[0]

that reference would be brought onto the stack.

answered Jun 7, 2017 at 8:55

Peter Lawrey

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2 Comments

Reacher Over a year ago

Hi Peter,thank you of your reply, this is the entire code I got on the textbook, which means I didn't use the value of per[0] to do other things, but the author drew that left image made me really confusing...as you see, what I understand is the image I drew on the right, i really don't quite know which one should I go for...

Peter Lawrey Over a year ago

@Ruizhi an array isn't very useful unless you access it's elements.

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