| A string is a sequential COLLECTION of characters that are represented as a SINGLE DATA type. | A Character Array is a collection of char data types in sequential order. |
| Strings are IMMUTABLE which means the data or state of a String object can't be modified once it has been created; instead, a new String object is generated. | Character Arrays are mutable which means the contents of a char array can be changed. |
| Strings can be used with built-in functions like substring() and charAt(). | In Java, there are no built-in functions for working with Character Arrays. |
| The '+' operator can be used to join two strings together to GENERATE a new one. | Appending two Character Arrays with '+' is not possible. |
| The charAt() method is used to access characters in a String at a specific index. | [] can be used to access the characters in a Character Array in the same way it can in any other language. |
| Strings can be stored in memory in any manner. | Character Array elements are sequentially stored at increasing memory places. |
| The String Constant Pool contains all Strings. | The Heap contains all Character Arrays. |
The toCharArray() function of the String class can be used to transform a String into a Character Array. Eg: String s = “GEEKS”; char [] ch = s.toCharArray(); The code above converts a string into a char array. | A String Constructor can be used to transform a Character Array to a String. Eg: char[] a = {‘G’, ‘E’, ‘E’, ‘K’, ‘S’}; String A = new String(a); The code above converts a char array into a string. |
