Department of Computer Science

Faculty of Physical Sciences

Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria

COSC 211 : Object Oriented Progr amming I - LAB07

Objectives:

To gain experience with:

using arrays
cloning arrays
writing methods that receives arrays as parameters or have array as their return type
using array of objects

1. Brief Review of Arrays

An array is a contiguous list of memory cells that can be identified using a single va
riable.

An array is declared as shown below

int[] grades = new int[10];

The above can also be broken into two steps:

1. Declaration of the array: int[] grades;

This declares a reference variable for an integer arr

ay (a variable that can hold the address of an integer arr
ay).
grades

2. Creation of the array object: grades = new int[10];

This creates the array object in the memory (just like any object) and stores its address in the reference variable gr
ades.

Notice that the index of an array begins from zero and ends one less than the size. Any attempt to access elements outside this range will make the java interpreter to
throw ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException.

Once an array is created, its individual elements can be accessed y

b using the array name followed by the index in square brackets. Example, to assign 15 to element
number 6, we write:
grades[5] = 15;

Each array has an instance final variablelength that holds the size of the array. This is very useful if we need to access each element of the arr
ay. For example, the
following for loop initializes each element of the arr
ay to its index:
for (int i = 0; i < grades.length; i++)
grades[i] = i;

If we have the values to be assigned to an arr

ay are known, then an array can be created usinginitializer list as follows:
char[] vowels = {‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o’, ‘u’}

This declares and creates a character array of five elements and initializes it with the vowel characters. Notice that in this case, the size is not specified and the new
operator is not used. The compiler automatically counts the elements, creates an arr ay of the appropriate size and fills the array with the elements.

We can also create array of objects. For example, the following declares an arr
ay to hold 10 student objects:
Student[] student = new Student[10];

However, unlike array of primitive types where primitive values are stored directly into the arr ay cells, array of objects is used to store the references to the objects.For
example, to store a reference to a student object in the first cell of the arr
ay, we create the student object as follows:
student[i] = new Student(. . .);

2. Example programs

Example 1: The following creates two array and prints their vector and dot products.Notice that the method vectorProduct() method receives two array parameters and
returns another array – the vector product of the two arrays.
public class Vector {

public static void main(String[] args) {

double[] x = {5, 2, -3, 4, -2};

double[] y = {2, 3, 5, -4, -6};

double[] z;

z = vectorProduct(x, y);
 System.out.println("The vector product is: ");

for(int k = 0; k < z.length; k++)

System.out.print(z[k] + " ");

System.out.println("\n\nThe dot product is: "+dotProduct(x,y));

public static double[] vectorProduct(double[] a, double[] b) {

double[] t = new double[a.length];

for(int i = 0; i < a.length; i++)

t[i] = a[i] * b[i];

return t;

public static double dotProduct(double[] a, double[] b) {

double sum=0;

for(int i = 0; i < a.length; i++)

sum = a[i] * b[i];

return sum;

Example 2: The demonstrates array cloning.

public class ArrayCloning {

public static void main(String[] args) {

int k;

double[] x = {5, 2, -3, 4, -2};

double[] y = new double[5];

double[] z = {10, 25, 30, 45};

double[] w;

y = x; // y and x refer to the same object. The object that was referenced b y y is lost

System.out.println("The array referenced by y is: ");

for(k = 0; k < y.length; k++)

System.out.print(y[k] + " ");

x[0] = 200;

x[4] = 66;

System.out.println("\n\nThe array referenced by y is: ");

for(k = 0; k < y.length; k++)

System.out.print(y[k] + " ");

w = (double[])z.clone(); // w and z refer to different objects

z[0] = 88;

z[2] = -99;

System.out.println("\n\nThe array referenced by w is: ");

for(k = 0; k < w.length; k++)

System.out.print(w[k] + " ");

Example 3: The following examples shows that we can have arr

ay as an instance variable. It also shows how array instance variable may be initialized by a constructor.
Notice that the Student class is in its own separ
ate file.
class Student {
 private int iDNumber;

double[] quiz;

public Student(int iDNumber, double[] quiz) {

this.iDNumber = iDNumber;

this.quiz = quiz;

public int getID() {

return iDNumber;

public double getQuiz(int quizNumber) {

if(quizNumber >= 1 && quizNumber <= quiz.length)

return quiz[quizNumber - 1];

else

return -1.0;

public void setQuiz(int quizNumber, double quizGrade) {

if(quizNumber >= 1 && quizNumber <= quiz.length)

quiz[quizNumber - 1] = quizGrade;

public double sum() {

double sum = 0;

for(int k = 0; k < quiz.length; k++)

sum += quiz[k];

return sum;

public double average() {

return sum() / quiz.length;

public String toString() {

String s = ""+iDNumber;

for (int i = 0; i<quiz.length; i++)

s += "\t"+quiz[i];

s += "\t"+average();

return s;

import java.util.Scanner;

public class TestStudent {

public static void main(String[] args) {

double[] quiz = {50, 30, 60, 55};

Student student = new Student(980000, quiz);

/* destroy the object referenced by quiz, so that the only way to obtain quiz information is from the object referenced by student

*/

quiz = null;

System.out.println("Student information before changing grade:");

System.out.println(student);

student.setQuiz(3, 90);

student.setQuiz(4, 75);

System.out.println("\nStudent information after changing grades:");

 System.out.println(student);

Example 4: The following example shows how to usearray of objects. It uses the same Student class as in example 3 above to create an array of three students objects,
each one having ID number and three quizzes.The Program then prints the average of each students and the overall average for all students.
import java.util.Scanner;

public class TestStudent2 {

static Scanner stdin = new Scanner(System.in);

static final int STUDENT_COUNT = 3, QUIZZES_COUNT = 3;

public static void main(String[] args) {

Student[] student = new Student[STUDENT_COUNT];

double sum=0;

for(int i = 0; i < student.length; i++) {

System.out.println("\nCreating student #"+ (i+1));

student[i] = createStudent();

System.out.println("\nID\tAverage");

for(int i = 0; i < student.length; i++) {

System.out.println(student[i].getID()+"\t"+student[i].average());

sum += student[i].sum();

System.out.println("\nOverall average is: " + sum/(STUDENT_COUNT*QUIZZES_COUNT));

static Student createStudent() {

int id;

double[] quiz = new double[QUIZZES_COUNT];

System.out.print("Enter student ID# ");

id = stdin.nextInt();

System.out.println("\nEnter three quizzes for this student");

for (int i=0; i<quiz.length; i++) {

System.out.print("Quiz#"+ (i+1)+ " ");

quiz[i] = stdin.nextDouble();

Student s = new Student(id, quiz);

return s;

3. Assignments

1. Modify example 3 so that after the array is created (as in example 3), it displays a menu that allows the operations shown in the following figure to be performed
in a loop until the Quit option is chosen.
 Note: If the first option is chosen, your program should prompt for and read a quiz number.It then calls the getQuiz() method to print it. If option 3 is chosen,
your program should prompts for and read the quiz number and the new grade for that quiz. It then calls the setQuiz() method to change the grade and then
display the updated student information.

2. Modify example 4 as follows:

· Add another method,static double quizAverege(Student[] student, int k) that receives an array of student objects and a quiz number as par
ameters. It then
returns the average for that quiz.
· Now modifies the main method so that it prints :
o the ID number, grades and average of each student in a tabular form
o the average of each each quiz
o the overall average for all students.

3. Ahmadu Bello University Press wants to know the maximum, minimum, total, and aver age profit gained from years 2005 to 2014.
Besides that, they are interested in knowing the difference between the maximum and minimum profit and those profits that are above aver
age.
The profits are as follows.

Year Profit( )
2005 5,000,000.34
2006 2,005.000.00
2007 3,020,000.97
2008 5,057,800.20
2009 4,500,000.67
2010 5,000,000.00
2011 3,048,900.56
2012 4,800,000.50
2013 2,980,000.71
2014 4,909,000.80

(a) Create a class calledProfit that has the following members

i. Two array fields to store the profit and year named profit and year using appropriate data types.
ii. A method called getMaxProfit() that will return the maximum profit.
iii. A method called getMinProfit() that will return the minimum profit.
iv. A method called getSumOfProfit() that will return the total profit.
v. A method called getAverageProfit() that will return the average profit.
vi. A method called getRange() that will return the difference between the maximum and minimum profits.
vii. A method called showProfitBelowAverage() that will display all profits that are below average.
(b) Create a test class that will instantiate theProfit class and display the required results with suitable headings and labels