In which class is the length property of array defined

Question

We can determine the length of an ArrayList<E> using its public method size(), like

ArrayList<Integer> arr = new ArrayList(10);
int size = arr.size();

Similarly we can determine the length of an Array object using the length property

String[] str = new String[10];
int size =  str.length;

Whereas the size() method of ArrayList is defined inside the ArrayList class, where is this length property of Array defined?

Answer 1

It's defined in the Java language specification:

The members of an array type are all of the following:

• The public final field length, which contains the number of components of the array. length may be positive or zero.

Since there is a limitless number of array types (for every class there is a corresponding array type, and then there are multidimensional arrays), they cannot be implemented in a class file; the JVM has to do it on the fly.