[akeefer]

. . . except that doesn't get you a modifiable list, it just wraps a List interface around the array that's implicitly created by the var-arg, so it's a trick you have to be careful with.

Personally I often end up writing little helpers like: List<T> list(T... args) { return new ArrayList<T>(Arrays.asList(args)) } usually in test code. A built-in List and Map-initialization syntax is really something every decent programming language ought to have.

[litewulf]

(Consider using the Google collections library if possible. It already has that in the form of classes like Lists, Maps, etc that provide builders and factory methods.)