Top 20 Array Based Coding Interview Questions Answers (with Resources)

How to find duplicate elements in an array?

Hello guys, An array is the most fundamental data structure, which stores elements at a contiguous memory location. It is also one of the darling topics of interviewers and you will hear a lot of questions about an array in any coding interview, like reversing an array, sorting the array, or searching elements on the array.

The key benefit of an array data structure is that it offers fast O(1) search if you know the index, but adding and removing an element from an array is slow because you cannot change the size of the array once it’s created.

How to Remove Duplicates from Array without Using Java Collection API? Example

This is a coding question recently asked to one of my readers in a Java Technical interview on investment bank. The question was to remove duplicates from an integer array without using any collection API classes like Set, HashSet, TreeSet or LinkedHashSet, which can make this task trivial. In general, if you need to do this for any project work, I suggest better using the Set interface, particularly LinkedHashSet, because that also keeps the order on which elements are inserted into Set. Why Set? because it doesn't allow duplicates and if you insert duplicate the add() method of Set interface will return false. 

How to find smallest number from int array in Java, Python, JavaScript and Golang? [Solved]

This is the second part on this array interview question. In the first part, I have showed you how to find the largest element in array, and in this part, you will learn how to find the smallest number from an integer array. We will solve this problem on Java programming language but you are free to solve in any other programming language like Python or JavaScript. Most interviewer doesn't care much about which programming language you are solving the question, if you can provide working solution. This one is also a popular Java programming exercise which is taught in school and colleges and give in homework to teach programming to kids and engineering graduates. 

How to Find Multiple Missing Integers in Given Array of Numbers with Duplicates in Java?

Hello guys, It's been a long time since I have discussed any coding or algorithm interview questions, so I thought to revisit one of the most popular array-based coding problems of finding missing numbers in a given array of integers. You might have heard or seen this problem before on your programming job interviews and you might already know how to solve this problem. But, there are a lot of different versions of this problem with increasing difficulty levels which interviewers normally use to confuse candidates and further test their ability to adapt to frequent changes, which is key to surviving in the ever-changing software development world.

Difference between a List and Array in Java? ArrayList vs Array Example

Hello there, if you are wondering what is the difference between a list and an array, or particularly an ArrayList and an Array in Java then you have come to the right place. Earlier, I have shared the best data structure and algorithm courses and in this article, I will explain to you the differences and similarities between a list and an array in Java.  Both array and ArrayList are two important data structures in Java and frequently used in Java programs. Even though ArrayList is internally backed by an array, knowing the difference between an array and an ArrayList in Java is critical for becoming a good Java developer. If you know the similarity and differences, you can judiciously decide when to use an array over an ArrayList or vice-versa. 

How to Find all Pairs in Array of Integers Whose sum is Equal to a Given Number in Java? Solution Example

Practicing coding problems are very important to do well in any programming interview. You should at your best on data structures like an array, linked list, and string to clear any programming interview and believe me, you can not do this in one day or one week. It's rather a long process of learning through coding, and that's where these small coding problems help. Today, we are going to look at another interesting programming question from the array; write a program to find all pairs of integers whose sum is equal to a given number. For example, if the input integer array is {2, 6, 3, 9, 11} and the given sum is 9, the output should be {6,3}.

How to Create and Initialize Anonymous Array in Java? Example

Anonymous arrays in Java is an Array without any name, just like Anonymous inner classes and policy of using Anonymous array is just create, initialize and use it, Since it doesn't have any name you can not reuse it. The anonymous array was a good way to implement variable argument methods before Java introduced varargs in Java5. You had the liberty to create an array of any length and pass that to a method that operates on an anonymous array. Classical example of such variable argument method is aggregate function like sum(), avg(), min(), max() etc.

Can You Make an Array or ArrayList Volatile in Java?

This is one of the many interesting multi-threading questions I have shared in my post 50 multi-threading interview questions. Yes, you can make an array volatile in Java, there is no problem with that, neither compiler will flag any error not JVM will throw any exception but the tricky part is why you want to make an array volatile and what is the effect of making an array volatile in Java? In order to answer this question, you must be familiar with both volatile modifier and Java memory model, otherwise, it would be difficult to answer, and that's why it's also one of the trick questions from Java interviews. Before answering this question in detail, let's first revise what is a volatile keyword in Java and what kind of guarantee it provides in the context of multithreading and concurrency.

Difference between Linked List and Array in Java? Example

Array and linked lists are two fundamental data structures in the programming world. Almost all programs use Array in some form or other, which makes it increasingly important to learn array and linked list. The difference between the linked list and array data structure is also a popular data structure question, frequently asked in the various programming job interviews. This makes it even more important to learn and understand the difference between an array and a linked list. Well, there are a lot of differences between these two starting from how they store data, to how you retrieve data from them.

How to merge two sorted arrays in Java? Example Tutorial

Hello guys, if you want to learn how to merge two sorted arrays in Java then you have come to the right place. Earlier, I have shown you how to sort arrays in Java, and in this article, I will show you how to merge two sorted arrays in Java. Btw, if you are a complete beginner then Firstly, you need to know what an array is before going about solving this problem about sorted array.  An array is a data structure in Java that holds values of the same type with its length specified right from creation time. This means you can create an integer array like int[] to store integer value. Think of a container, like a crate of eggs or coke, where number of places are fixed and you cannot change once you created it.

[Solved] How to Find maximum Product of a sub-array in Java? Example

Hello guys, if you are asked to find maximum product of a sub-array in Java and you are wondering how to solve this difficult looking coding problem then you have come to the right place. Earlier, I have shared 30 array coding problems, 30 linked list problems, and 10 dynamic programming problems and in this article, we shall be finding the maximum product of a sub-array in java. This problem has a lot to do with arrays. But first, we'll solve the problem then we talk about Array and how it operates. The problem we are to solve here is to find the maximum product of a subarray in Java. 

How to Rotate Array to Left or Right in Java? Example - LeetCode Solution

Hello guys, rotating an array in Java is a common coding problems which are often used to teach beginners coding as well used during interviews to check candidate's programming and data structure skills. This problem may look easy but its not that easy, especially if you are not coding regular. In order to rotate an array of n elements to the right by kth index, you need to rearrange the item in such a way that the array will start from k + 1the element.  For example, with n = 7 and k = 3, the array [1, 2, 3, 4 ,5, 6, 7] is rotated to [5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4]. See, it looks like you pick the the 4th element and rotated the array in right direction. The problem becomes even more interesting when interviewer ask you to rotate the array by left or right and in place. Could you do it in-place with O(1) extra space?

3 Ways to Find Duplicate Elements in an Array - Java

There are multiple ways to find duplicate elements in an array in Java and we will see three of them in this program. The solution and logic shown in this article are generic and apply to an array of any type e.g. String array or integer array or array of any object. One of the most common ways to find duplicates is by using the brute force method, which compares each element of the array to every other element. This solution has the time complexity of O(n^2) and only exists for academic purposes. You shouldn't be using this solution in the real world.

How to sort an Array in Java? Ascending and Descending Order Example

As a Java programmer, quite often you would need to sort array in Java luckily java.util.Arrays class provides several utility methods to sort an array in Java. You can sort different types of array in Java like array of primitive data types, object or int, String, etc. Arrays are in java.util package and exposed all sorting related methods as static utility functions. you can access sort() as Arrays.sort() and just pass your array and it will sort that array object by comparing them in the order implemented in the compareTo() method if the class implements Comparable interface. 

How to loop through an Array in Java? Example Tutorial

Hello there, If you want to loop over an array in Java but not sure how to do that then you have come to the right place. Earlier, I have shared many Java array tutorials and the best Java courses for beginners, and today, I am going to teach you how to iterate over an array in Java. There are multiple ways to loop over an array in Java, like you can use a for loop, an enhanced for loop, a while loop, or a do-while loop. Since while and do-while needs a condition to terminate they often depend upon the content of the array like stop when the current element is null or even or odd etc. If you just want to iterate over an array to access each element like loop over an array and print each entry then you should use either for loop or the enhanced for loop.

How to declare and initialize a List with values in Java (ArrayList/LinkedList) - Arrays.asList() Example

Hello guys, today, I am going to share with you a useful tip to initialize a List like ArrayList or LinkedList with values, which will help you a lot while writing unit tests and prototypes. Initializing a list while declaring is very convenient for quick use, but unfortunately, Java doesn't provide any programming constructs like the collection literals of Scala, but there is a trick which you can use to declare and initialize a List at the same time. This trick is also known as initializing a List with values. I have used this trick a lot while declaring list for unit testing and writing demo programs to understand an API etc and today I'll you'll also learn that.

How to use Array in Java? Example Tutorial

The array is one of the most important data structures in any programming language, at the same time different programming languages implement and treat the array differently. Anyone who is done some programming knows the value of an array and the importance of knowing about array type, using them in their program. Together with a linked list, the array forms a set of basic data structures. Though Java offers excellent Collection API and some of the collection classes like ArrayList and  HashMap, they are internally based on the array.

6 ways to declare and initialize a two-dimensional (2D) String and Integer Array in Java - Example Tutorial

Declaring a two-dimensional array is very interesting in Java as the Java programming language provides many ways to declare a 2D array and each one of them has some special things to learn about. For example, It's possible to create a two-dimensional array in Java without specifying the second dimension, sounds crazy right? but it's possible because a two-dimensional array in Java is nothing but an array of array. You can even create a two-dimensional array where each subarray has a different length or different type, also known as a heterogeneous array in Java. This means it's possible to create a two-dimensional array with variable column length in Java.

Recursive Binary Search Algorithm in Java - Example Tutorial

The binary search algorithm is one of the most famous search algorithms in computer science. It allows you to search a value in logarithmic time i.e. O(logN), which makes it ideal to search a number on a huge list. For example, in order to search a number in a list of 1 million numbers will take around 210 comparisons compared to 1 million comparisons required by the linear search algorithm. The only thing is that the list must be sorted before you can use a binary search algorithm and it must support index-based search. 

How to Compare Arrays in Java – Equals vs deepEquals Example

java.util.Arrays class provides equals() and deepEquals() method to compare two Arrays in Java. Both of these are overloaded methods to compare primitive arrays e.g. int, long, float, double, and Object arrays e.g. Arrays.equals(Object[], Object[]). Arrays.equals() returns true if both Arrays which it is comparing are null If both arrays pointing to the same Array Object or they must be of the same length and contains the same element in each index. In all other cases, it returns false. Arrays.equals() calls equals() method of each Object while comparing Object arrays.