Need help understanding NEW keyword

Question

I can create a string array a couple of different ways.
Method one:
      Dim i As Integer
      Dim sarr1(4) As String
      For i = 0 To sarr1.Length - 1
         sarr1(i) = "12345"
      Next
Method two:     
     Dim sarr2 = New String() {"12345", "12345", "12345", "12345", "12345"}
Are these two methods equivalent?
If I try to declare the arrays by either of the following methods, I get errors.
Method three:
       Dim sarr3 As New String(4)
       error: Value of type 'Integer' cannot be converted to '1-dimensional array of Char'.
Method four:
        Dim sarr4(4) As New String()
        error: Arrays cannot be declared with 'New'.
Why isn't method four equivalent to method two except for the initialization?     
Regards, Mike

Answer 1

Method 1 and 2 are basically the same. We didn't always have array initializers in the language (method2). That has only been around the past couple of years. Prior to that you had to do some sort of loop to initialize the array like your method 1. Method
2 was added just to make it easier from a syntax point of view. It certainly looks cleaner and you can read one line of code and know what the array is and what its contents are.
The reason method 2 and method 4 are different is because in method 2, you are performing an assignment. It is using type inference so it might not be as clear, but method 2 could be fully written out as
Dim sarr2() As String = New String() {"12345", "12345", "12345", "12345", "12345"}
In which case you can see that it isn't really using the new keyword for the declaration, but for the right side instantiation of a string array, which is then assigned to the declared array variable.
Matt Kleinwaks - MSMVP MSDN Forums Moderator - www.zerosandtheone.com