How to declare an ArrayList with values?

Use:

List<String> x = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList("xyz", "abc"));

If you don't want to add new elements to the list later, you can also use (Arrays.asList returns a fixed-size list):

List<String> x = Arrays.asList("xyz", "abc");

Note: you can also use a static import if you like, then it looks like this:

import static java.util.Arrays.asList;

...

List<String> x = new ArrayList<>(asList("xyz", "abc"));

or

List<String> x = asList("xyz", "abc");

In Java 9+ you can do:

var x = List.of("xyz", "abc");
// 'var' works only for local variables

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Java 8 using Stream:

Stream.of("xyz", "abc").collect(Collectors.toList());

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And of course, you can create a new object using the constructor that accepts a Collection:

List<String> x = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList("xyz", "abc"));

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Tip: The docs contains very useful information that usually contains the answer you're looking for. For example, here are the constructors of the ArrayList class:

• ArrayList()

  Constructs an empty list with an initial capacity of ten.

• ArrayList(Collection<? extends E> c) (*)

  Constructs a list containing the elements of the specified collection, in the order they are returned by the collection's iterator.

• ArrayList(int initialCapacity)

  Constructs an empty list with the specified initial capacity.