In this article, we are going to discuss whether String is a primitive data type or a Derived data type.
Definitely, String is not a primitive data type. It is a derived data type. Derived data types are also called reference types because they refer to an object. They call methods to perform operations. A string is a Class present in Java.lang package. A string can be created directly by assigning the set of characters enclosed in double-quotes to a variable or by instantiating a String class using the new keyword. Let’s look into a few examples of String initialization/declaration.
String str1 = “Geeks_for_Geeks”; // direct way
String str2 = new String(“GFG”); // instantiating String class using the new keyword
Let’s look into the sample examples on Strings in Java.
Example 1: Here in the below code a String is initialized and declared in the normal way (just like we used to do in the case of primitive types) and called a method getClass() which specifies the Class where the String is present.
Java
import java.io.*;class GFG { public static void main(String[] args) { // normal way of string initialization and // declaration String s1 = "GFG"; System.out.println(s1 + "\n" + s1.getClass()); }} |
GFG class java.lang.String
Example 2: As String is a Derived type it is capable of calling various methods. Here in this code, we called a charAt() method which accepts an Integer as index position and returns a character at that specified index.
Java
import java.io.*;class GFG { public static void main(String[] args) { String str = new String("India"); // returns character at index 1 System.out.println("Character at index 1 is - " + str.charAt(1)); }} |
Character at index 1 is - n
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