how to return a string getting error (type mismatch)

Question

I need to return a string type but I keep getting a type mismatch, how do I fix this

public static string[] count(int a, int b) {
int[] arr = a[b + 1 - a];

for(int i = a; i <= b; i++) {
    arr[i - a] = i;
}          
return arr;
}

Answer 1

public static int[] count(int a, int b) {

    int[] arr = new int[a*(b + 1 - a)];

    for(int i = a; i <= b; i++) {
        arr[i - a] = i;
    }
    return arr;
}

Or

public static String[] count(int a, int b) {

    String[] arr = new String[a*(b + 1 - a)];

    for(int i = a; i <= b; i++) {
        arr[i - a] = i;
    }
    return arr;
}

Answer 2

If you want to return a String type but you have an array of int that you need to return, you can use Arrays.toString(int[]) method to convert and format an int[] array into a String. Also your initialization of the int[] arr was wrong, it should be `new int[size].

public static String count(int a, int b) {
    int[] arr = new int[b + 1 - a];

    for(int i = a; i <= b; i++) {
        arr[i - a] = i;
    }
    return Arrays.toString(arr);
}

Example:

Running the following: System.out.println(count(1,6)); produces:

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Alternatively, you may do an array iteration and format the output as you like using a StringBuffer:

   public static String count(int a, int b) {
        int[] arr = new int[b + 1 - a];
        StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
        for(int i = a; i <= b; i++) {
            arr[i - a] = i;
        }
        for (int i=0; i<arr.length; i++){
            sb.append(i);
            if (i<arr.length-1){
                sb.append(" - ");
            }
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }

In the above example, each number is separated with - like in

0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5

Answer 3

convert int array to String array and return the string array instead of returning the int array

String strArray[] = Arrays.stream(arr)
                            .mapToObj(String::valueOf)
                            .toArray(String[]::new);

    System.out.println(Arrays.toString(strArray));
    return strArray;