Unlike C/C++ Character arrays and Strings are two different things in Java. Both Character Arrays and Strings are a collection of characters but are different in terms of properties. Differences between Strings and Character Arrays:
| Strings | Character Arrays |
|---|---|
| String refers to a sequence of characters represented as a single data type. | Character Array is a sequential collection of data type char. |
| Strings are immutable. | Character Arrays are mutable. |
| Built in functions like substring(), charAt() etc can be used on Strings. | No built in functions are provided in Java for operations on Character Arrays. |
| ‘+’ can be used to appended strings together to form a new string. | ‘+’ cannot be used to append two Character Arrays. |
| The charAt() method can be used to access characters at a particular index in a String. | The characters in a Character Array can be accessed normally like in any other language by using []. |
| Strings can be stored in any manner in the memory. | Elements in Character Array are stored contiguously in increasing memory locations. |
| All Strings are stored in the String Constant Pool. | All Character Arrays are stored in the Heap. |
| Not preferred for storing passwords in Java. | Preferred for storing passwords in Java. |
| A String can be converted into Character Array by using the toCharArray() method of String class. Eg: String s = “GEEKS”; char [] ch = s.toCharArray(); | A Character Array can be converted into String by passing it into a String Constructor. Eg: char[] a = {‘G’, ‘E’, ‘E’, ‘K’, ‘S’}; String A = new String(a); |
