Answer by Jordão for Initialization of an ArrayList in one line

You could create a factory method:

public static ArrayList<String> createArrayList(String ... elements) {  ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();  for (String element : elements) {    list.add(element);  }  return list;}....ArrayList<String> places = createArrayList("São Paulo", "Rio de Janeiro", "Brasília");

But it's not much better than your first refactoring.

For greater flexibility, it can be generic:

public static <T> ArrayList<T> createArrayList(T ... elements) {  ArrayList<T> list = new ArrayList<T>();  for (T element : elements) {    list.add(element);  }  return list;}