What’s the Kotlin equivalent of Java’s String[]?

There’s no special case for String, because String is an ordinary referential type on JVM, in contrast with Java primitives (int, double, …) — storing them in a reference Array<T> requires boxing them into objects like Integer and Double. The purpose of specialized arrays like IntArray in Kotlin is to store non-boxed primitives, getting rid of boxing and unboxing overhead (the same as Java int[] instead of Integer[]).

You can use Array<String> (and Array<String?> for nullables), which is equivalent to String[] in Java:

val stringsOrNulls = arrayOfNulls<String>(10) // returns Array<String?>
val someStrings = Array<String>(5) { "it = $it" }
val otherStrings = arrayOf("a", "b", "c")

See also: Arrays in the language reference

use arrayOf, arrayOfNulls, emptyArray

var colors_1: Array<String> = arrayOf("green", "red", "blue")
var colors_2: Array<String?> = arrayOfNulls(3)
var colors_3: Array<String> = emptyArray()

To create an empty Array of Strings in Kotlin you should use one of the following six approaches:

First approach:

val empty = arrayOf<String>()

Second approach:

val empty = arrayOf("","","")

Third approach:

val empty = Array<String?>(3) { null }

Fourth approach:

val empty = arrayOfNulls<String>(3)

Fifth approach:

val empty = Array<String>(3) { "it = $it" }

Sixth approach:

val empty = Array<String>(0, { _ -> "" })

Those types are there so that you can create arrays of the primitives, and not the boxed types. Since String isn’t a primitive in Java, you can just use Array<String> in Kotlin as the equivalent of a Java String[].