E.7. Passing Arrays to Methods

This section demonstrates how to pass arrays and individual array elements as arguments to methods. To pass an array argument to a method, specify the name of the array without any brackets. For example, if array hourlyTemperatures is declared as

double[] hourlyTemperatures = new double[ 24 ];

then the method call

modifyArray( hourlyTemperatures );

passes the reference of array hourlyTemperatures to method modifyArray. Every array object “knows” its own length (via its length field). Thus, when we pass an array object’s reference into a method, we need not pass the array length as an additional argument.

For a method to receive an array reference through a method call, the method’s parameter list must specify an array parameter. For example, the method header for method modifyArray might be written as