In the old days, we can use list.toArray(new String[0]) to convert a ArrayList<String> into a String[]

package com.mkyong;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
public class StringArrayExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();
        list.add("A");
        list.add("B");
        list.add("C");
        // default, returns Object[], not what we want,
        // Object[] objects = list.toArray();
        // all jdk
        String[] str = list.toArray(new String[0]);
        for (String s : str) {
            System.out.println(s);

Output

For Java 8, we can do like this :

	// Java 8
	String[] str = list.stream().toArray(String[]::new);

For Java 9, we have a new way to create a List

	// Java 9
	List<String> list = List.of("A", "B", "C");

For Java 11, we can do the conversion like this :

	// Java 9
	List<String> list = List.of("A", "B", "C");
	// Java 11
    String[] str = list.toArray(String[]::new);