Performance of Arrays.asList
java, optimization, performance
Solution
It is cheap, O(1). As you suspect the list is merely a wrapper around the array. This is confirmed by the Java API documentation:
Returns a fixed-size list backed by the specified array. (Changes to the returned list "write through" to the array.)
Problem
What is the cost of using Arrays.asList to convert static object arrays? Assuming that the object array has N items is it just an O(N) algorithm, where all of the items are copied by reference or is it merely a facade where the original array is put behind a List facade?