您应该更喜欢泛型类型而不是数组。正如其他人所提到的，数组是不灵活的，不具有泛型类型的表达能力。(它们确实支持运行时类型检查，但这与泛型类型混在一起很糟糕。)

但是，与往常一样，在优化时，你应该始终遵循以下步骤:

Don't optimize until you have a nice, clean, and working version of your code. Changing to generic types could very well be motivated at this step already. When you have a version that is nice and clean, decide if it is fast enough. If it isn't fast enough, measure its performance. This step is important for two reasons. If you don't measure you won't (1) know the impact of any optimizations you make and (2) know where to optimize. Optimize the hottest part of your code. Measure again. This is just as important as measuring before. If the optimization didn't improve things, revert it. Remember, the code without the optimization was clean, nice, and working.

如果提前知道数据有多大，那么使用数组会更快。

List更加灵活。你可以使用由数组支持的数组列表。

不要在没有适当基准测试的情况下陷入优化的陷阱。正如其他人建议的那样，在做出任何假设之前使用分析器。

您所列举的不同数据结构具有不同的用途。列表在开头和结尾插入元素时非常有效，但在访问随机元素时却很困难。数组具有固定的存储，但提供快速的随机访问。最后，ArrayList通过允许数组增长来改进与数组的接口。通常，要使用的数据结构应该由如何访问或添加存储的数据来决定。

About memory consumption. You seem to be mixing some things. An array will only give you a continuous chunk of memory for the type of data that you have. Don't forget that java has a fixed data types: boolean, char, int, long, float and Object (this include all objects, even an array is an Object). It means that if you declare an array of String strings [1000] or MyObject myObjects [1000] you only get a 1000 memory boxes big enough to store the location (references or pointers) of the objects. You don't get a 1000 memory boxes big enough to fit the size of the objects. Don't forget that your objects are first created with "new". This is when the memory allocation is done and later a reference (their memory address) is stored in the array. The object doesn't get copied into the array only it's reference.

使用哪一种取决于问题本身。我们得看看大O。

图片来源:https://github.com/egonSchiele/grokking_algorithms

我不认为这对Strings有什么影响。字符串数组中连续的是对字符串的引用，字符串本身存储在内存中的随机位置。

数组与列表的区别在于基本类型，而不是对象。如果您预先知道元素的数量，并且不需要灵活性，那么由数百万个整数或双精度数组成的数组将比列表在内存和速度上更有效，因为它们确实是连续存储的，并且可以立即访问。这就是为什么Java仍然使用字符数组表示字符串，使用整数数组表示图像数据，等等。

不，因为从技术上讲，数组只存储对字符串的引用。字符串本身被分配到不同的位置。对于上千个项目，我会说列表会更好，它更慢，但它提供了更多的灵活性，更容易使用，特别是如果你要调整它们的大小。