Given an array of n Objects, let's say it is an array of strings, and it has the following values:
foo[0] = "a";
foo[1] = "cc";
foo[2] = "a";
foo[3] = "dd";
What do I have to do to delete/remove all the strings/objects equal to "a" in the array?
[If you want some ready-to-use code, please scroll to my "Edit3" (after the cut). The rest is here for posterity.]
To flesh out Dustman's idea:
List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(array));
list.removeAll(Arrays.asList("a"));
array = list.toArray(array);
Edit: I'm now using Arrays.asList instead of Collections.singleton: singleton is limited to one entry, whereas the asList approach allows you to add other strings to filter out later: Arrays.asList("a", "b", "c").
Edit2: The above approach retains the same array (so the array is still the same length); the element after the last is set to null. If you want a new array sized exactly as required, use this instead:
array = list.toArray(new String[0]);
Edit3: If you use this code on a frequent basis in the same class, you may wish to consider adding this to your class:
private static final String[] EMPTY_STRING_ARRAY = new String[0];
Then the function becomes:
List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();
Collections.addAll(list, array);
list.removeAll(Arrays.asList("a"));
array = list.toArray(EMPTY_STRING_ARRAY);
This will then stop littering your heap with useless empty string arrays that would otherwise be newed each time your function is called.
cynicalman's suggestion (see comments) will also help with the heap littering, and for fairness I should mention it:
array = list.toArray(new String[list.size()]);
I prefer my approach, because it may be easier to get the explicit size wrong (e.g., calling size() on the wrong list).
An alternative in Java 8:
String[] filteredArray = Arrays.stream(array)
.filter(e -> !e.equals(foo)).toArray(String[]::new);
Make a List out of the array with Arrays.asList(), and call remove() on all the appropriate elements. Then call toArray() on the 'List' to make back into an array again.
Not terribly performant, but if you encapsulate it properly, you can always do something quicker later on.
You can always do:
int i, j;
for (i = j = 0; j < foo.length; ++j)
if (!"a".equals(foo[j])) foo[i++] = foo[j];
foo = Arrays.copyOf(foo, i);
You can use external library:
org.apache.commons.lang.ArrayUtils.remove(java.lang.Object[] array, int index)
It is in project Apache Commons Lang http://commons.apache.org/lang/
See code below
ArrayList<String> a = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList(strings));
a.remove(i);
strings = new String[a.size()];
a.toArray(strings);
If you need to remove multiple elements from array without converting it to List nor creating additional array, you may do it in O(n) not dependent on count of items to remove.
Here, a is initial array, int... r are distinct ordered indices (positions) of elements to remove:
public int removeItems(Object[] a, int... r) {
int shift = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
if (shift < r.length && i == r[shift]) // i-th item needs to be removed
shift++; // increment `shift`
else
a[i - shift] = a[i]; // move i-th item `shift` positions left
}
for (int i = a.length - shift; i < a.length; i++)
a[i] = null; // replace remaining items by nulls
return a.length - shift; // return new "length"
}
Small testing:
String[] a = {"0", "1", "2", "3", "4"};
removeItems(a, 0, 3, 4); // remove 0-th, 3-rd and 4-th items
System.out.println(Arrays.asList(a)); // [1, 2, null, null, null]
In your task, you can first scan array to collect positions of "a", then call removeItems().
There are a lot of answers here--the problem as I see it is that you didn't say WHY you are using an array instead of a collection, so let me suggest a couple reasons and which solutions would apply (Most of the solutions have already been answered in other questions here, so I won't go into too much detail):
reason: You didn't know the collection package existed or didn't trust it
solution: Use a collection.
If you plan on adding/deleting from the middle, use a LinkedList. If you are really worried about size or often index right into the middle of the collection use an ArrayList. Both of these should have delete operations.
reason: You are concerned about size or want control over memory allocation
solution: Use an ArrayList with a specific initial size.
An ArrayList is simply an array that can expand itself, but it doesn't always need to do so. It will be very smart about adding/removing items, but again if you are inserting/removing a LOT from the middle, use a LinkedList.
reason: You have an array coming in and an array going out--so you want to operate on an array
solution: Convert it to an ArrayList, delete the item and convert it back
reason: You think you can write better code if you do it yourself
solution: you can't, use an Array or Linked list.
reason: this is a class assignment and you are not allowed or you do not have access to the collection apis for some reason
assumption: You need the new array to be the correct "size"
solution:
Scan the array for matching items and count them. Create a new array of the correct size (original size - number of matches). use System.arraycopy repeatedly to copy each group of items you wish to retain into your new Array. If this is a class assignment and you can't use System.arraycopy, just copy them one at a time by hand in a loop but don't ever do this in production code because it's much slower. (These solutions are both detailed in other answers)
reason: you need to run bare metal
assumption: you MUST not allocate space unnecessarily or take too long
assumption: You are tracking the size used in the array (length) separately because otherwise you'd have to reallocate your array for deletes/inserts.
An example of why you might want to do this: a single array of primitives (Let's say int values) is taking a significant chunk of your ram--like 50%! An ArrayList would force these into a list of pointers to Integer objects which would use a few times that amount of memory.
solution: Iterate over your array and whenever you find an element to remove (let's call it element n), use System.arraycopy to copy the tail of the array over the "deleted" element (Source and Destination are same array)--it is smart enough to do the copy in the correct direction so the memory doesn't overwrite itself:
System.arraycopy(ary, n+1, ary, n, length-n)
length--;
You'll probably want to be smarter than this if you are deleting more than one element at a time. You would only move the area between one "match" and the next rather than the entire tail and as always, avoid moving any chunk twice.
In this last case, you absolutely must do the work yourself, and using System.arraycopy is really the only way to do it since it's going to choose the best possibly way to move memory for your computer architecture--it should be many times faster than any code you could reasonably write yourself.
Something about the make a list of it then remove then back to an array strikes me as wrong. Haven't tested, but I think the following will perform better. Yes I'm probably unduly pre-optimizing.
boolean [] deleteItem = new boolean[arr.length];
int size=0;
for(int i=0;i<arr.length;i==){
if(arr[i].equals("a")){
deleteItem[i]=true;
}
else{
deleteItem[i]=false;
size++;
}
}
String[] newArr=new String[size];
int index=0;
for(int i=0;i<arr.length;i++){
if(!deleteItem[i]){
newArr[index++]=arr[i];
}
}
I realise this is a very old post, but some of the answers here helped me out, so here's my tuppence' ha'penny's worth!
I struggled getting this to work for quite a while before before twigging that the array that I'm writing back into needed to be resized, unless the changes made to the ArrayList leave the list size unchanged.
If the ArrayList that you're modifying ends up with greater or fewer elements than it started with, the line List.toArray() will cause an exception, so you need something like List.toArray(new String[] {}) or List.toArray(new String[0]) in order to create an array with the new (correct) size.
Sounds obvious now that I know it. Not so obvious to an Android/Java newbie who's getting to grips with new and unfamiliar code constructs and not obvious from some of the earlier posts here, so just wanted to make this point really clear for anybody else scratching their heads for hours like I was!
Initial array
int[] array = {5,6,51,4,3,2};
if you want remove 51 that is index 2, use following
for(int i = 2; i < array.length -1; i++){
array[i] = array[i + 1];
}
EDIT:
The point with the nulls in the array has been cleared. Sorry for my comments.
Original:
Ehm... the line
array = list.toArray(array);
replaces all gaps in the array where the removed element has been with null. This might be dangerous, because the elements are removed, but the length of the array remains the same!
If you want to avoid this, use a new Array as parameter for toArray(). If you don`t want to use removeAll, a Set would be an alternative:
String[] array = new String[] { "a", "bc" ,"dc" ,"a", "ef" };
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(array));
Set<String> asSet = new HashSet<String>(Arrays.asList(array));
asSet.remove("a");
array = asSet.toArray(new String[] {});
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(array));
Gives:
[a, bc, dc, a, ef]
[dc, ef, bc]
Where as the current accepted answer from Chris Yester Young outputs:
[a, bc, dc, a, ef]
[bc, dc, ef, null, ef]
with the code
String[] array = new String[] { "a", "bc" ,"dc" ,"a", "ef" };
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(array));
List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(array));
list.removeAll(Arrays.asList("a"));
array = list.toArray(array);
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(array));
without any null values left behind.
My little contribution to this problem.
public class DeleteElementFromArray {
public static String foo[] = {"a","cc","a","dd"};
public static String search = "a";
public static void main(String[] args) {
long stop = 0;
long time = 0;
long start = 0;
System.out.println("Searched value in Array is: "+search);
System.out.println("foo length before is: "+foo.length);
for(int i=0;i<foo.length;i++){ System.out.println("foo["+i+"] = "+foo[i]);}
System.out.println("==============================================================");
start = System.nanoTime();
foo = removeElementfromArray(search, foo);
stop = System.nanoTime();
time = stop - start;
System.out.println("Equal search took in nano seconds = "+time);
System.out.println("==========================================================");
for(int i=0;i<foo.length;i++){ System.out.println("foo["+i+"] = "+foo[i]);}
}
public static String[] removeElementfromArray( String toSearchfor, String arr[] ){
int i = 0;
int t = 0;
String tmp1[] = new String[arr.length];
for(;i<arr.length;i++){
if(arr[i] == toSearchfor){
i++;
}
tmp1[t] = arr[i];
t++;
}
String tmp2[] = new String[arr.length-t];
System.arraycopy(tmp1, 0, tmp2, 0, tmp2.length);
arr = tmp2; tmp1 = null; tmp2 = null;
return arr;
}
}
It depends on what you mean by "remove"? An array is a fixed size construct - you can't change the number of elements in it. So you can either a) create a new, shorter, array without the elements you don't want or b) assign the entries you don't want to something that indicates their 'empty' status; usually null if you are not working with primitives.
In the first case create a List from the array, remove the elements, and create a new array from the list. If performance is important iterate over the array assigning any elements that shouldn't be removed to a list, and then create a new array from the list. In the second case simply go through and assign null to the array entries.
Arrgh, I can't get the code to show up correctly. Sorry, I got it working. Sorry again, I don't think I read the question properly.
String foo[] = {"a","cc","a","dd"},
remove = "a";
boolean gaps[] = new boolean[foo.length];
int newlength = 0;
for (int c = 0; c<foo.length; c++)
{
if (foo[c].equals(remove))
{
gaps[c] = true;
newlength++;
}
else
gaps[c] = false;
System.out.println(foo[c]);
}
String newString[] = new String[newlength];
System.out.println("");
for (int c1=0, c2=0; c1<foo.length; c1++)
{
if (!gaps[c1])
{
newString[c2] = foo[c1];
System.out.println(newString[c2]);
c2++;
}
}
Will copy all elements except the one with index i:
if(i == 0){
System.arraycopy(edges, 1, copyEdge, 0, edges.length -1 );
}else{
System.arraycopy(edges, 0, copyEdge, 0, i );
System.arraycopy(edges, i+1, copyEdge, i, edges.length - (i+1) );
}
If it doesn't matter the order of the elements. you can swap between the elements foo[x] and foo[0], then call foo.drop(1).
foo.drop(n) removes (n) first elements from the array.
I guess this is the simplest and resource efficient way to do.
PS: indexOf can be implemented in many ways, this is my version.
Integer indexOf(String[] arr, String value){
for(Integer i = 0 ; i < arr.length; i++ )
if(arr[i] == value)
return i; // return the index of the element
return -1 // otherwise -1
}
while (true) {
Integer i;
i = indexOf(foo,"a")
if (i == -1) break;
foo[i] = foo[0]; // preserve foo[0]
foo.drop(1);
}
to remove only the first of several equal entries
with a lambda
boolean[] done = {false};
String[] arr = Arrays.stream( foo ).filter( e ->
! (! done[0] && Objects.equals( e, item ) && (done[0] = true) ))
.toArray(String[]::new);
can remove null entries
In an array of Strings like
String name = 'a b c d e a f b d e' // could be like String name = 'aa bb c d e aa f bb d e'
I build the following class
class clearname{
def parts
def tv
public def str = ''
String name
clearname(String name){
this.name = name
this.parts = this.name.split(" ")
this.tv = this.parts.size()
}
public String cleared(){
int i
int k
int j=0
for(i=0;i<tv;i++){
for(k=0;k<tv;k++){
if(this.parts[k] == this.parts[i] && k!=i){
this.parts[k] = '';
j++
}
}
}
def str = ''
for(i=0;i<tv;i++){
if(this.parts[i]!='')
this.str += this.parts[i].trim()+' '
}
return this.str
}}
return new clearname(name).cleared()
getting this result
a b c d e f
hope this code help anyone
Regards
Assign null to the array locations.
Lets say you have an array like this: String[] theWords = {"hello", "good bye", "tomorrow"}. I want to remove/ignore all the strings in the array that have the letter 'e'. How would I go about doing that? My thinking is to go:
for (int arrPos = 0; arrPos < theWords.length; arrPos++) { //Go through the array
for (int charPos = 0; charPos < theWords[arrPos].length(); charPos++) { //Go through the strings in the array
if (!((theWords[arrPos].charAt(charPos) == 'e')) { //Finds 'e' in the strings
//Put the words that don't have any 'e' into a new array;
//This is where I'm stuck
}
}
}
I'm not sure if my logic works and if I'm even on the right track. Any responses would be helpful. Many thanks.
One easy way to filter an array is to populate an ArrayList with if in a for-each loop:
List<String> noEs = new ArrayList<>();
for (String word : theWords) {
if (!word.contains("e")) {
noEs.add(word);
}
}
Another way in Java 8 is to use Collection#removeIf:
List<String> noEs = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList(theWords));
noEs.removeIf(word -> word.contains("e"));
Or use Stream#filter:
String[] noEs = Arrays.stream(theWords)
.filter(word -> !word.contains("e"))
.toArray(String[]::new);
You can directly use contains() method of String class to check if "e" is present in your string. That will save your extra for loop.
It would be simple if you use ArrayList.
importing import java.util.ArrayList;
ArrayList<String> theWords = new ArrayList<String>();
ArrayList<String> yourNewArray = new ArrayList<String>;//Initializing you new array
theWords.add("hello");
theWords.add("good bye");
theWords.add("tommorow");
for (int arrPos = 0; arrPos < theWords.size(); arrPos++) { //Go through the array
if(!theWords.get(arrPos).contains("e")){
yourNewArray.add(theWords.get(arrPos));// Adding non-e containing string into your new array
}
}
The problem you have is that you need to declare and instantiate the String array before you even know how many elements are going to be in it (since you wouldn't know how many strings would not contain 'e' before going through the loop).
Instead, if you use an ArrayList you do not need to know the required size beforehand. Here is my code from start to end.
String[] theWords = { "hello", "good bye", "tomorrow" };
//creating a new ArrayList object
ArrayList<String> myList = new ArrayList<String>();
//adding the corresponding array contents to the list.
//myList and theWords point to different locations in the memory.
for(String str : theWords) {
myList.add(str);
}
//create a new list containing the items you want to remove
ArrayList<String> removeFromList = new ArrayList<>();
for(String str : myList) {
if(str.contains("e")) {
removeFromList.add(str);
}
}
//now remove those items from the list
myList.removeAll(removeFromList);
//create a new Array based on the size of the list when the strings containing e is removed
//theWords now refers to this new Array.
theWords = new String[myList.size()];
//convert the list to the array
myList.toArray(theWords);
//now theWords array contains only the string(s) not containing 'e'
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(theWords));
I have the following code which sorts a mixed array of items while maintaining the position of types:
For example:
[20, "abc", "moose", 2,1] turns into [1, "abc", "moose", 2, 20]
Algorithm:
public class Algorithm {
public static String[] sortMixedArray(String[] input){
if (input.length == 0){
return input;
}
// make new arraylist for strings and numbers respectively
List<String> strs = new ArrayList<String>();
List<Integer> numbers = new ArrayList<Integer>();
// add values to the arraylist they belong to
for (String item : input){
if (NumberUtils.isNumber(item)){
numbers.add(Integer.valueOf(item));
} else {
strs.add(item);
}
}
// sort for O(nlogn)
Collections.sort(strs);
Collections.sort(numbers);
// reuse original array
for (int i = 0; i < input.length; i++){
if (NumberUtils.isNumber(input[i])) {
input[i] = String.valueOf(numbers.remove(0));
} else {
input[i] = strs.remove(0);
}
}
return input;
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
String[] test = new String[] {"moo", "boo"};
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(sortMixedArray(test)));
}
I have a two-part question:
1. Is switching between array and arraylist efficient? That is, should I have used arrays everywhere instead of arraylist if my input MUST be an array.
2. What is the best way to place arraylist items back into a array? I am checking for type, is there a better way?
1.If you do it the way you have it in your code then it's perfectly fine. If you know beforehand how many elements you will have it's better to use arrays but thats not the case in your example.
2.The best and easiest way is to use the toArray() function of the List interface.
ArrayList<String> list = ...;
String[] array = list.toArray(new String[list.size()]);
But this won't work for your code since you are merging two lists into one array. You can still improve your code a bit because you do not actually have to remove the items from the lists when putting them back in the array. This safes some computation since removing the first element from an ArrayList is very inefficient (O(N) runtime per remove operation).
for (int i = 0, s = 0, n = 0; i < input.length; i++) {
if (NumberUtils.isNumber(input[i])) {
input[i] = Integer.toString(numbers.get(n++));
} else {
input[i] = strs.get(s++);
}
}
No but it highly unlikely to matter unless you have a million of elements.
Do whatever you believe is simplest and most efficient for you, the developer.
BTW the least efficient operations is remove(0) which is O(N) so you might change that.
I have 3 arraylist each have size = 3 and 3 arrays also have length = 3 of each. I want to copy data from arraylists to arrays in following way but using any loop (i.e for OR for each).
myArray1[1] = arraylist1.get(1);
myArray1[2] = arraylist2.get(1);
myArray1[3] = arraylist3.get(1);
I have done it manually one by one without using any loop, but code appears to be massive because in future I'm sure that number of my arraylists and arrays will increase up to 15.
I want to copy the data from arraylists to arrays as shown in the image but using the loops not manually one by one?
How about this?
List<Integer> arraylist0 = Arrays.asList(2,4,3);
List<Integer> arraylist1 = Arrays.asList(2,5,7);
List<Integer> arraylist2 = Arrays.asList(6,3,7);
List<List<Integer>> arraylistList = Arrays.asList(arraylist0, arraylist1, arraylist2);
int size = 3;
int[] myArray0 = new int[size];
int[] myArray1 = new int[size];
int[] myArray2 = new int[size];
int[][] myBigArray = new int[][] {myArray0, myArray1, myArray2};
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++) {
myBigArray[i][j] = arraylistList.get(j).get(i);
}
}
To explain, since we want to be able to work with an arbitrary size (3, 15, or more), we are dealing with 2-dimensional data.
We are also dealing with array and List, which are slightly different in their use.
The input to your problem is List<Integer>, and so we make a List<List<Integer>> in order to deal with all the input data easily.
Similarly, the output will be arrays, so we make a 2-dimensional array (int[][]) in order to write the data easily.
Then it's simply a matter of iterating over the data in 2 nested for loops. Notice that this line reverses the order of i and j in order to splice the data the way you intend.
myBigArray[i][j] = arraylistList.get(j).get(i);
And then you can print your answer like this:
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(myArray0));
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(myArray1));
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(myArray2));
You need to have two additional structures:
int[][] destination = new int [][] {myArray1, myArray2,myArray3 }
List<Integer>[] source;
source = new List<Integer>[] {arraylist1,arraylist2,arraylist3}
myArray1[1] = arraylist1.get(1);
myArray1[2] = arraylist2.get(1);
myArray1[3] = arraylist3.get(1);
for (int i=0;i<destination.length;i++) {
for (int j=0;j<source.length;j++) {
destination[i][j] = source[j].get(i);
}
}
If you cannot find a ready made API or function for this, I would suggest trivializing the conversion from List to Array using the List.toArray() method and focus on converting/transforming the given set of lists to a another bunch of lists which contain the desired output. Following is a code sample which I would think achieves this. It does assume the input lists are NOT of fixed/same sizes. Assuming this would only make the logic easier.
On return of this function, all you need to do is to iterate over the TreeMap and convert the values to arrays using List.toArray().
public static TreeMap<Integer, List<Integer>> transorm(
List<Integer>... lists) {
// Return a blank TreeMap if not input. TreeMap explanation below.
if (lists == null || lists.length == 0)
return new TreeMap<>();
// Get Iterators for the input lists
List<Iterator<Integer>> iterators = new ArrayList<>();
for (List<Integer> list : lists) {
iterators.add(list.iterator());
}
// Initialize Return. We return a TreeMap, where the key indicates which
// position's integer values are present in the list which is the value
// of this key. Converting the lists to arrays is trivial using the
// List.toArray() method.
TreeMap<Integer, List<Integer>> transformedLists = new TreeMap<>();
// Variable maintaining the position for which values are being
// collected. See below.
int currPosition = 0;
// Variable which keeps track of the index of the iterator currently
// driving the iteration and the driving iterator.
int driverItrIndex = 0;
Iterator<Integer> driverItr = lists[driverItrIndex].iterator();
// Actual code that does the transformation.
while (driverItrIndex < iterators.size()) {
// Move to next driving iterator
if (!driverItr.hasNext()) {
driverItrIndex++;
driverItr = iterators.get(driverItrIndex);
continue;
}
// Construct Transformed List
ArrayList<Integer> transformedList = new ArrayList<>();
for (Iterator<Integer> iterator : iterators) {
if (iterator.hasNext()) {
transformedList.add(iterator.next());
}
}
// Add to return
transformedLists.put(currPosition, transformedList);
}
// Return Value
return transformedLists;
}
In my application I need to have a 2 dimensional array. If I define it fix it works fine, like this:
static final String arrGroupelements[] = {"India", "Australia", "England", "South Africa"};
static final String arrChildelements[][] = { {"Sachin Tendulkar", "Raina", "Dhoni", "Yuvi" },
{"Ponting", "Adam Gilchrist", "Michael Clarke"},
{"Andrew Strauss", "kevin Peterson", "Nasser Hussain"},
{"Graeme Smith", "AB de villiers", "Jacques Kallis"} };
However, in my code I have two lists. the first is list of recipe name that i can get it.
LinkedList<String> recipeList = dbShoppingHandler.getAllRecipeNames();
String arrGroupelements[] = new String[recipeList.size()];
for(int i=0; i<recipeList.size(); i++) {
arrGroupelements[i] = recipeList.get(i);
}
My second list is list of ingredients. In order to get list of ingredients i need to set recipe name and then i can get the list. However, i don't know how put this list as second dimension. my code is like this:
String arrChildelements[][] = new String[recipeList.size()][20];
for(int i=0; i<recipeList.size(); i++) {
LinkedList<String> ingredient = dbShoppingHandler.getIngredientsOfRecipeName(recipeList.get(i));
for(int j=0; j<ingredient.size(); j++) {
arrChildelements[i][j] = ingredient.get(j);
}
}
Bad thing is, i need to set a number (in my case 20) for second dimension. If i do like this for lists that have 5 items i will have 15 " " elements and those have more than 20 items the code ignore them.
First dimension is fix but i need to adjust second dimension based on number of ingredients.
any suggestion are appreciated. thanks.
How about assigning an array in the desired sise:
String arrChildelements[][] = new String[recipeList.size()][];
// not mentioning second dimension size ^^
for(int i=0; i<recipeList.size(); i++) {
LinkedList<String> ingredient = dbShoppingHandler.getIngredientsOfRecipeName(recipeList.get(i));
arrChildelements[i] = String[ingredient.size()];
// assigning new array here ^^
for(int j=0; j<ingredient.size(); j++) {
arrChildelements[i][j] = ingredient.get(j);
}
}
I suggest not to use 2D arrays for dynamic structures. Arrays are immutable, so you have to copy them, create gaps and move elements around. The standard Java library doesn't offer many useful methods to do that.
Instead, use a list of lists:
List<List<String>> data = new ArrayList<List<String>>();
Lists have many useful methods to append elements, insert and remove them and they will make you life much easier.
The simplest way to to not assume you know the length in advance.
String[][] arrChildelements[] = new String[recipeList.size()][];
for(int i=0; i<recipeList.size(); i++) {
List<String> ingredient = dbShoppingHandler.getIngredientsOfRecipeName(recipeList.get(i));
arrChildelements[i] = ingredient.toArray(new String[0]);
}