Java arrays declarations

The top one is an array-literal (or constant array), the second one is an array declaration. When you assign immediately there's no difference, they're both allocated dynamically in exactly the same way.

The only difference is that a array-literal can only be used during initialization of an array variable, meaning you can't use the literal syntax to re-assign the value of an array.

// Here, these are equivalent
int[] a = new int[] { 1, 2, 3};
int[] b = {1, 2, 3};

// They differ during re-assignment
a = new int[] { 4, 5, 6}; // This is fine, a now "points" to a new array.
b = {4, 5, 6}; // Will not compile!

Hope this helps,
Fredrik