[java] Where is Java's Array indexOf?

Unlike in C# where you have the Array.IndexOf method, and JavaScript where you have the indexOf method, Java's API (the Array and Arrays classes in particular) have no such method.

This method indexOf (together with its complement lastIndexOf) is defined in the java.util.List interface. Note that indexOf and lastIndexOf are not overloaded and only take an Object as a parameter.

If your array is sorted, you are in luck because the Arrays class defines a series of overloads of the binarySearch method that will find the index of the element you are looking for with best possible performance (O(log n) instead of O(n), the latter being what you can expect from a sequential search done by indexOf). There are four considerations:

1. The array must be sorted either in natural order or in the order of a Comparator that you provide as an argument, or at the very least all elements that are "less than" the key must come before that element in the array and all elements that are "greater than" the key must come after that element in the array;

2. The test you normally do with indexOf to determine if a key is in the array (verify if the return value is not -1) does not hold with binarySearch. You need to verify that the return value is not less than zero since the value returned will indicate the key is not present but the index at which it would be expected if it did exist;

3. If your array contains multiple elements that are equal to the key, what you get from binarySearch is undefined; this is different from indexOf that will return the first occurrence and lastIndexOf that will return the last occurrence.

4. An array of booleans might appear to be sorted if it first contains all falses and then all trues, but this doesn't count. There is no override of the binarySearch method that accepts an array of booleans and you'll have to do something clever there if you want O(log n) performance when detecting where the first true appears in an array, for instance using an array of Booleans and the constants Boolean.FALSE and Boolean.TRUE.

If your array is not sorted and not primitive type, you can use List's indexOf and lastIndexOf methods by invoking the asList method of java.util.Arrays. This method will return an AbstractList interface wrapper around your array. It involves minimal overhead since it does not create a copy of the array. As mentioned, this method is not overloaded so this will only work on arrays of reference types.

If your array is not sorted and the type of the array is primitive, you are out of luck with the Java API. Write your own for loop, or your own static utility method, which will certainly have performance advantages over the asList approach that involves some overhead of an object instantiation. In case you're concerned that writing a brute force for loop that iterates over all of the elements of the array is not an elegant solution, accept that that is exactly what the Java API is doing when you call indexOf. You can make something like this:

public static int indexOfIntArray(int[] array, int key) {
    int returnvalue = -1;
    for (int i = 0; i < array.length; ++i) {
        if (key == array[i]) {
            returnvalue = i;
            break;
        }
    }
    return returnvalue;
}

If you want to avoid writing your own method here, consider using one from a development framework like Guava. There you can find an implementation of indexOf and lastIndexOf.