STRINGS
A Java object is considered immutable when its state cannot change after it is created. Use of immutable objects is widely accepted as a sound strategy for creating simple, reliable code. Immutable objects are particularly useful in concurrent applications. Since they cannot change state, they cannot be corrupted by thread interference or observed in an inconsistent state. java.lang.String and java.lang.Integer classes are the Examples of immutable objects from the Java Development Kit. Immutable objects simplify your program due to following characteristics :
- Immutable objects are simple to use test and construct.
- Immutable objects are automatically thread-safe.
- Immutable objects do not require a copy constructor.
- Immutable objects do not require an implementation of clone.
- Immutable objects allow hashCode to use lazy initialization, and to cache its return value.
- Immutable objects do not need to be copied defensively when used as a field.
- Immutable objects are good Map keys and Set elements (Since state of these objects must not change while stored in a collection).
- Immutable objects have their class invariant established once upon construction, and it never needs to be checked again.
- Immutable objects always have "failure atomicity" (a term used by Joshua Bloch) : if an immutable object throws an exception, it's never left in an undesirable or indeterminate state.
To create a object immutable You need to make the class final and all its member final so that once objects gets crated no one can modify its state. You can achieve same functionality by making member as non final but private and not modifying them except in constructor. Also its NOT necessary to have all the properties final since you can achieve same functionality by making member as non final but private and not modifying them except in constructor.
The main difference between the three most commonly used String classes as follows.
- StringBuffer and StringBuilder objects are mutable whereas String class objects are immutable.
- StringBuffer class implementation is synchronized while StringBuilder class is not synchronized.
- Concatenation operator "+" is internally implemented by Java using either StringBuffer or StringBuilder.
Criteria to choose among String, StringBuffer and StringBuilder
- If the Object value will not change in a scenario use String Class because a String object is immutable.
- If the Object value can change and will only be modified from a single thread, use a StringBuilder because StringBuilder is unsynchronized(means faster).
- If the Object value may change, and can be modified by multiple threads, use a StringBuffer because StringBuffer is thread safe(synchronized).
It is very useful to have strings implemented as final or immutable objects. Below are some advantages of String Immutability in Java
- Immutable objects are thread-safe. Two threads can both work on an immutable object at the same time without any possibility of conflict.
- Security: the system can pass on sensitive bits of read-only information without worrying that it will be altered
- You can share duplicates by pointing them to a single instance.
- You can create substrings without copying. You just create a pointer into an existing base String guaranteed never to change. Immutability is the secret that makes Java substring implementation very fast.
- Immutable objects are good fit for becoming Hashtable keys. If you change the value of any object that is used as a hash table key without removing it and re-adding it you will lose the object mapping.
- Since String is immutable, inside each String is a char[] exactly the correct length. Unlike a StringBuilder there is no need for padding to allow for growth.
- If String were not final, you could create a subclass and have two strings that look alike when "seen as Strings", but that are actually different.
The Java Spec says that everything in Java is pass-by-value. There is no such thing as "pass-by-reference" in Java. The difficult thing can be to understand that Java passes "objects as references" passed by value. This can certainly get confusing and I would recommend reading this article from an expert:http://javadude.com/articles/passbyvalue.htm
This Error is thrown when the Java Virtual Machine cannot allocate an object because it is out of memory, and no more memory could be made available by the garbage collector. Note: Its an Error (extends java.lang.Error) not Exception. Two important types of OutOfMemoryError are often encountered
- java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
The quick solution is to add these flags to JVM command line when Java runtime is started:
- -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m
-Xms1024m -Xmx1024m
- java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space
The solution is to add these flags to JVM command line when Java runtime is started:
- -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled-XX:+CMSPermGenSweepingEnabled
-XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled-XX:+CMSPermGenSweepingEnabled
Long Term Solution: Increasing the Start/Max Heap size or changing Garbage Collection options may not always be a long term solution for your Out Of Memory Error problem. Best approach is to understand the memory needs of your program and ensure it uses memory wisely and does not have leaks. You can use a Java memory profiler to determine what methods in your program are allocating large number of objects and then determine if there is a way to make sure they are no longer referenced, or to not allocate them in the first place.
Finally is the block of code that executes always. The code in finally block will execute even if an exception is occurred. Finally block is NOT called in following conditions
- If the JVM exits while the try or catch code is being executed, then the finally block may not execute. This may happen due to System.exit() call.
- if the thread executing the try or catch code is interrupted or killed, the finally block may not execute even though the application as a whole continues.
- If a exception is thrown in finally block and not handled then remaining code in finally block may not be executed.
From the JavaDoc of java.sql.Date:
A thin wrapper around a millisecond value that allows JDBC to identify this as an SQL DATE value. A milliseconds value represents the number of milliseconds that have passed since January 1, 1970 00:00:00.000 GMT. To conform with the definition of SQL DATE, the millisecond values wrapped inside a java.sql.Date instance must be 'normalized' by setting the hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds to zero.
Explanation: A java.util.Date represents date and time of day, a java.sql.Date only represents a date (the complement of java.sql.Date is java.sql.Time, which only represents a time of day, but also extends java.util.Date).
The marker interface is a design pattern, used with languages that provide run-time type information about objects. It provides a way to associate metadata with a class where the language does not have explicit support for such metadata. To use this pattern, a class implements a marker interface, and code that interact with instances of that class test for the existence of the interface. Whereas a typical interface specifies methods that an implementing class must support, a marker interface does not do so. The mere presence of such an interface indicates specific behavior on the part of the implementing class. There can be some hybrid interfaces, which both act as markers and specify required methods, are possible but may prove confusing if improperly used. Java utilizes this pattern very well and the example interfaces are
- java.io.Serializable - Serializability of a class is enabled by the class implementing the java.io.Serializable interface. The Java Classes that do not implement Serializable interface will not be able to serialize or deserializ their state. All subtypes of a serializable class are themselves serializable. The serialization interface has no methods or fields and serves only to identify the semantics of being serializable.
- java.rmi.Remote - The Remote interface serves to identify interfaces whose methods may be invoked from a non-local virtual machine. Any object that is a remote object must directly or indirectly implement this interface. Only those methods specified in a "remote interface", an interface that extends java.rmi.Remote are available remotely.
- java.lang.Cloneable - A class implements the Cloneable interface to indicate to the Object.clone() method that it is legal for that method to make a field-for-field copy of instances of that class. Invoking Object's clone method on an instance that does not implement the Cloneable interface results in the exception CloneNotSupportedException being thrown.
- javax.servlet.SingleThreadModel - Ensures that servlets handle only one request at a time. This interface has no methods.
- java.util.EvenListener - A tagging interface that all event listener interfaces must extend.
The "instanceof" keyword in java can be used to test if an object is of a specified type. So this keyword in combination with Marker interface can be used to take different actions based on type of interface an object implements.
Public - main method is called by JVM to run the method which is outside the scope of project therefore the access specifier has to be public to permit call from anywhere outside the application static - When the JVM makes are call to the main method there is not object existing for the class being called therefore it has to have static method to allow invocation from class. void - Java is platform independent language therefore if it will return some value then the value may mean different to different platforms so unlike C it can not assume a behavior of returning value to the operating system. If main method is declared as private then - Program will compile properly but at run-time it will give "Main method not public." error.
COLLECTIONS
Java Collections framework API is a unified architecture for representing and manipulating collections. The API contains Interfaces, Implementations & Algorithm to help java programmer in everyday programming. In nutshell, this API does 6 things at high level
- Reduces programming efforts. - Increases program speed and quality.
- Allows interoperability among unrelated APIs.
- Reduces effort to learn and to use new APIs.
- Reduces effort to design new APIs.
- Encourages & Fosters software reuse.
To be specific, There are six collection java interfaces. The most basic interface is Collection. Three interfaces extend Collection: Set, List, and SortedSet. The other two collection interfaces, Map and SortedMap, do not extend Collection, as they represent mappings rather than true collections.
Some of the collection classes provide traversal of their contents via a java.util.Iterator interface. This interface allows you to walk through a collection of objects, operating on each object in turn. Remember when using Iterators that they contain a snapshot of the collection at the time the Iterator was obtained; generally it is not advisable to modify the collection itself while traversing an Iterator.
Iterator : Enables you to traverse through a collection in the forward direction only, for obtaining or removing elements ListIterator : extends Iterator, and allows bidirectional traversal of list and also allows the modification of elements.
Map is Interface which is part of Java collections framework. This is to store Key Value pair, and Hashmap is class that implements that using hashing technique.
Both Hashtable & HashMap provide key-value access to data. The Hashtable is one of the original collection classes in Java (also called as legacy classes). HashMap is part of the new Collections Framework, added with Java 2, v1.2. There are several differences between HashMap and Hashtable in Java as listed below
- The HashMap class is roughly equivalent to Hashtable, except that it is unsynchronized and permits nulls. (HashMap allows null values as key and value whereas Hashtable doesn’t allow nulls).
- HashMap does not guarantee that the order of the map will remain constant over time. But one of HashMap's subclasses is LinkedHashMap, so in the event that you'd want predictable iteration order (which is insertion order by default), you can easily swap out the HashMap for a LinkedHashMap. This wouldn't be as easy if you were using Hashtable.
- HashMap is non synchronized whereas Hashtable is synchronized.
- Iterator in the HashMap is fail-fast while the enumerator for the Hashtable isn't. So this could be a design consideration.
Synchronized means only one thread can modify a hash table at one point of time. Any thread before performing an update on a hashtable will have to acquire a lock on the object while others will wait for lock to be released.
At high level - Fail-fast is a property of a system or software with respect to its response to failures. A fail-fast system is designed to immediately report any failure or condition that is likely to lead to failure. Fail-fast systems are usually designed to stop normal operation rather than attempt to continue a possibly-flawed process. When a problem occurs, a fail-fast system fails immediately and visibly. Failing fast is a non-intuitive technique: "failing immediately and visibly" sounds like it would make your software more fragile, but it actually makes it more robust. Bugs are easier to find and fix, so fewer go into production. In Java, Fail-fast term can be related to context of iterators. If an iterator has been created on a collection object and some other thread tries to modify the collection object "structurally", a concurrent modification exception will be thrown. It is possible for other threads though to invoke "set" method since it doesn't modify the collection "structurally". However, if prior to calling "set", the collection has been modified structurally, "IllegalArgumentException" will be thrown.
From Sun FAQ Page: Many Collection implementations (including all of the ones provided by the JDK) will have a public clone method, but it would be mistake to require it of all Collections. For example, what does it mean to clone a Collection that's backed by a terabyte SQL database? Should the method call cause the company to requisition a new disk farm? Similar arguments hold for serializable. If the client doesn't know the actual type of a Collection, it's much more flexible and less error prone to have the client decide what type of Collection is desired, create an empty Collection of this type, and use the addAll method to copy the elements of the original collection into the new one. Note on Some Important Terms
- Synchronized means only one thread can modify a hash table at one point of time. Basically, it means that any thread before performing an update on a hashtable will have to acquire a lock on the object while others will wait for lock to be released.
- Fail-fast is relevant from the context of iterators. If an iterator has been created on a collection object and some other thread tries to modify the collection object "structurally”, a concurrent modification exception will be thrown. It is possible for other threads though to invoke "set" method since it doesn’t modify the collection "structurally”. However, if prior to calling "set", the collection has been modified structurally, "IllegalArgumentException" will be thrown.
HashMap can be synchronized by Map m = Collections.synchronizedMap(hashMap);
There are multiple aspects to this decision: 1. The basic difference between a Hashtable and an HashMap is that, Hashtable is synchronized while HashMap is not. Thus whenever there is a possibility of multiple threads accessing the same instance, one should use Hashtable. While if not multiple threads are going to access the same instance then use HashMap. Non synchronized data structure will give better performance than the synchronized one. 2. If there is a possibility in future that - there can be a scenario when you may require to retain the order of objects in the Collection with key-value pair then HashMap can be a good choice. As one of HashMap's subclasses is LinkedHashMap, so in the event that you'd want predictable iteration order (which is insertion order by default), you can easily swap out the HashMap for a LinkedHashMap. This wouldn't be as easy if you were using Hashtable. Also if you have multiple thread accessing you HashMap then Collections.synchronizedMap() method can be leveraged. Overall HashMap gives you more flexibility in terms of possible future changes.
Vector & ArrayList both classes are implemented using dynamically resizable arrays, providing fast random access and fast traversal. ArrayList and Vector class both implement the List interface. Both the classes are member of Java collection framework, therefore from an API perspective, these two classes are very similar. However, there are still some major differences between the two. Below are some key differences
- Vector is a legacy class which has been retrofitted to implement the List interface since Java 2 platform v1.2
- Vector is synchronized whereas ArrayList is not. Even though Vector class is synchronized, still when you want programs to run in multithreading environment using ArrayList with Collections.synchronizedList() is recommended over Vector.
- ArrayList has no default size while vector has a default size of 10.
- The Enumerations returned by Vector's elements method are not fail-fast. Whereas ArraayList does not have any method returning Enumerations.
Enumeration and Iterator are the interface available in java.util package. The functionality of Enumeration interface is duplicated by the Iterator interface. New implementations should consider using Iterator in preference to Enumeration. Iterators differ from enumerations in following ways:
- Enumeration contains 2 methods namely hasMoreElements() & nextElement() whereas Iterator contains three methods namely hasNext(), next(),remove().
- Iterator adds an optional remove operation, and has shorter method names. Using remove() we can delete the objects but Enumeration interface does not support this feature.
- Enumeration interface is used by legacy classes. Vector.elements() & Hashtable.elements() method returns Enumeration. Iterator is returned by all Java Collections Framework classes. java.util.Collection.iterator() method returns an instance of Iterator.
You should use ArrayList over Vector because you should default to non-synchronized access. Vector synchronizes each individual method. That's almost never what you want to do. Generally you want to synchronize a whole sequence of operations. Synchronizing individual operations is both less safe (if you iterate over a Vector, for instance, you still need to take out a lock to avoid anyone else changing the collection at the same time) but also slower (why take out a lock repeatedly when once will be enough)? Of course, it also has the overhead of locking even when you don't need to. It's a very flawed approach to have synchronized access as default. You can always decorate a collection using Collections.synchronizedList - the fact that Vector combines both the "resized array" collection implementation with the "synchronize every operation" bit is another example of poor design; the decoration approach gives cleaner separation of concerns. Vector also has a few legacy methods around enumeration and element retrieval which are different than the List interface, and developers (especially those who learned Java before 1.2) can tend to use them if they are in the code. Although Enumerations are faster, they don't check if the collection was modified during iteration, which can cause issues, and given that Vector might be chosen for its syncronization - with the attendant access from multiple threads, this makes it a particularly pernicious problem. Usage of these methods also couples a lot of code to Vector, such that it won't be easy to replace it with a different List implementation.
An enumeration is an interface containing methods for accessing the underlying data structure from which the enumeration is obtained. It is a construct which collection classes return when you request a collection of all the objects stored in the collection. It allows sequential access to all the elements stored in the collection.
The functionality of Enumeration interface is duplicated by the Iterator interface. Iterator has a remove() method while Enumeration doesn't. Enumeration acts as Read-only interface, because it has the methods only to traverse and fetch the objects, where as using Iterator we can manipulate the objects also like adding and removing the objects. So Enumeration is used when ever we want to make Collection objects as Read-only.
The basic difference between a Vector and an ArrayList is that, vector is synchronized while ArrayList is not. Thus whenever there is a possibility of multiple threads accessing the same instance, one should use Vector. While if not multiple threads are going to access the same instance then use ArrayList. Non synchronized data structure will give better performance than the synchronized one.
The java.lang.Object has two methods defined in it. They are - public boolean equals(Object obj) public int hashCode(). These two methods are used heavily when objects are stored in collections. There is a contract between these two methods which should be kept in mind while overriding any of these methods. The Java API documentation describes it in detail. The hashCode() method returns a hash code value for the object. This method is supported for the benefit of hashtables such as those provided by java.util.Hashtable or java.util.HashMap. The general contract of hashCode is: Whenever it is invoked on the same object more than once during an execution of a Java application, the hashCode method must consistently return the same integer, provided no information used in equals comparisons on the object is modified. This integer need not remain consistent from one execution of an application to another execution of the same application. If two objects are equal according to the equals(Object) method, then calling the hashCode method on each of the two objects must produce the same integer result. It is not required that if two objects are unequal according to the equals(java.lang.Object) method, then calling the hashCode method on each of the two objects must produce distinct integer results. However, the programmer should be aware that producing distinct integer results for unequal objects may improve the performance of hashtables. As much as is reasonably practical, the hashCode method defined by class Object does return distinct integers for distinct objects. The equals(Object obj) method indicates whether some other object is "equal to" this one. The equals method implements an equivalence relation on non-null object references: It is reflexive: for any non-null reference value x, x.equals(x) should return true. It is symmetric: for any non-null reference values x and y, x.equals(y) should return true if and only if y.equals(x) returns true. It is transitive: for any non-null reference values x, y, and z, if x.equals(y) returns true and y.equals(z) returns true, then x.equals(z) should return true. It is consistent: for any non-null reference values x and y, multiple invocations of x.equals(y) consistently return true or consistently return false, provided no information used in equals comparisons on the objects is modified. For any non-null reference value x, x.equals(null) should return false. The equals method for class Object implements the most discriminating possible equivalence relation on objects; that is, for any non-null reference values x and y, this method returns true if and only if x and y refer to the same object (x == y has the value true). Note that it is generally necessary to override the hashCode method whenever this method is overridden, so as to maintain the general contract for the hashCode method, which states that equal objects must have equal hash codes. A practical Example of hashcode() & equals(): This can be applied to classes that need to be stored in Set collections. Sets use equals() to enforce non-duplicates, and HashSet uses hashCode() as a first-cut test for equality. Technically hashCode() isn't necessary then since equals() will always be used in the end, but providing a meaningful hashCode() will improve performance for very large sets or objects that take a long time to compare using equals().
Many developers are concerned about the performance difference between java.util.Array.sort() java.util.Collections.sort() methods. Both methods have same algorithm the only difference is type of input to them. Collections.sort() has a input as List so it does a translation of List to array and vice versa which is an additional step while sorting. So this should be used when you are trying to sort a list. Arrays.sort is for arrays so the sorting is done directly on the array. So clearly it should be used when you have a array available with you and you want to sort it.
Java has implementation of BlockingQueue available since Java 1.5. Blocking Queue interface extends collection interface, which provides you power of collections inside a queue. Blocking Queue is a type of Queue that additionally supports operations that wait for the queue to become non-empty when retrieving an element, and wait for space to become available in the queue when storing an element. A typical usage example would be based on a producer-consumer scenario. Note that a BlockingQueue can safely be used with multiple producers and multiple consumers. An ArrayBlockingQueue is a implementation of blocking queue with an array used to store the queued objects. The head of the queue is that element that has been on the queue the longest time. The tail of the queue is that element that has been on the queue the shortest time. New elements are inserted at the tail of the queue, and the queue retrieval operations obtain elements at the head of the queue. ArrayBlockingQueue requires you to specify the capacity of queue at the object construction time itself. Once created, the capacity cannot be increased. This is a classic "bounded buffer" (fixed size buffer), in which a fixed-sized array holds elements inserted by producers and extracted by consumers. Attempts to put an element to a full queue will result in the put operation blocking; attempts to retrieve an element from an empty queue will be blocked.
Though the Map interface is part of collections framework, it does not extend collection interface. This is by design, and the answer to this questions is best described in Sun's FAQ Page: This was by design. We feel that mappings are not collections and collections are not mappings. Thus, it makes little sense for Map to extend the Collection interface (or vice versa). If a Map is a Collection, what are the elements? The only reasonable answer is "Key-value pairs", but this provides a very limited (and not particularly useful) Map abstraction. You can't ask what value a given key maps to, nor can you delete the entry for a given key without knowing what value it maps to. Collection could be made to extend Map, but this raises the question: what are the keys? There's no really satisfactory answer, and forcing one leads to an unnatural interface. Maps can be viewed as Collections (of keys, values, or pairs), and this fact is reflected in the three "Collection view operations" on Maps (keySet, entrySet, and values). While it is, in principle, possible to view a List as a Map mapping indices to elements, this has the nasty property that deleting an element from the List changes the Key associated with every element before the deleted element. That's why we don't have a map view operation on Lists.
a. Vector b. ArrayList c. LinkedList ArrayList and Vector both use an array to store the elements of the list. When an element is inserted into the middle of the list the elements that follow the insertion point must be shifted to make room for the new element. The LinkedList is implemented using a doubly linked list; an insertion requires only the updating of the links at the point of insertion. Therefore, the LinkedList allows for fast insertions and deletions.
java.util.ArrayList and java.util.LinkedList are two Collections classes used for storing lists of object references Here are some key differences:
- ArrayList uses primitive object array for storing objects whereas LinkedList is made up of a chain of nodes. Each node stores an element and the pointer to the next node. A singly linked list only has pointers to next. A doubly linked list has a pointer to the next and the previous element. This makes walking the list backward easier.
- ArrayList implements the RandomAccess interface, and LinkedList does not. The commonly used ArrayList implementation uses primitive Object array for internal storage. Therefore an ArrayList is much faster than a LinkedList for random access, that is, when accessing arbitrary list elements using the get method. Note that the get method is implemented for LinkedLists, but it requires a sequential scan from the front or back of the list. This scan is very slow. For a LinkedList, there's no fast way to access the Nth element of the list.
- Adding and deleting at the start and middle of the ArrayList is slow, because all the later elements have to be copied forward or backward. (Using System.arrayCopy()) Whereas Linked lists are faster for inserts and deletes anywhere in the list, since all you do is update a few next and previous pointers of a node.
- Each element of a linked list (especially a doubly linked list) uses a bit more memory than its equivalent in array list, due to the need for next and previous pointers.
- ArrayList may also have a performance issue when the internal array fills up. The arrayList has to create a new array and copy all the elements there. The ArrayList has a growth algorithm of (n*3)/2+1, meaning that each time the buffer is too small it will create a new one of size (n*3)/2+1 where n is the number of elements of the current buffer. Hence if we can guess the number of elements that we are going to have, then it makes sense to create a arraylist with that capacity during object creation (using construtor new ArrayList(capacity)). Whereas LinkedLists should not have such capacity issues.
Below is a snippet from SUN's site. The Java SDK contains 2 implementations of the List interface - ArrayList and LinkedList. If you frequently add elements to the beginning of the List or iterate over the List to delete elements from its interior, you should consider using LinkedList. These operations require constant-time in a LinkedList and linear-time in an ArrayList. But you pay a big price in performance. Positional access requires linear-time in a LinkedList and constant-time in an ArrayList.
Each java collection implementation class have different performance for different methods, which makes them suitable for different programming needs.
Performance of Map interface implementations
Hashtable
An instance of Hashtable has two parameters that affect its performance: initial capacity and load factor. The capacity is the number of buckets in the hash table, and the initial capacity is simply the capacity at the time the hash table is created. Note that the hash table is open: in the case of a "hash collision", a single bucket stores multiple entries, which must be searched sequentially. The load factor is a measure of how full the hash table is allowed to get before its capacity is automatically increased. The initial capacity and load factor parameters are merely hints to the implementation. The exact details as to when and whether the rehash method is invoked are implementation-dependent.
HashMap
This implementation provides constant-time [ Big O Notation is O(1) ] performance for the basic operations (get and put), assuming the hash function disperses the elements properly among the buckets. Iteration over collection views requires time proportional to the "capacity" of the HashMap instance (the number of buckets) plus its size (the number of key-value mappings). Thus, it's very important not to set the initial capacity too high (or the load factor too low) if iteration performance is important.
TreeMap
The TreeMap implementation provides guaranteed log(n) [ Big O Notation is O(log N) ] time cost for the containsKey, get, put and remove operations.
LinkedHashMap
A linked hash map has two parameters that affect its performance: initial capacity and load factor. They are defined precisely as for HashMap. Note, however, that the penalty for choosing an excessively high value for initial capacity is less severe for this class than for HashMap, as iteration times for this class are unaffected by capacity.
Performance of Set interface implementations
HashSet
The HashSet class offers constant-time [ Big O Notation is O(1) ] performance for the basic operations (add, remove, contains and size), assuming the hash function disperses the elements properly among the buckets. Iterating over this set requires time proportional to the sum of the HashSet instance's size (the number of elements) plus the "capacity" of the backing HashMap instance (the number of buckets). Thus, it's very important not to set the initial capacity too high (or the load factor too low) if iteration performance is important.
TreeSet
The TreeSet implementation provides guaranteed log(n) time cost for the basic operations (add, remove and contains).
LinkedHashSet
A linked hash set has two parameters that affect its performance: initial capacity and load factor. They are defined precisely as for HashSet. Note, however, that the penalty for choosing an excessively high value for initial capacity is less severe for this class than for HashSet, as iteration times for this class are unaffected by capacity.
Performance of List interface implementations
LinkedList
- Performance of get and remove methods is linear time [ Big O Notation is O(n) ] - Performance of add and Iterator.remove methods is constant-time [ Big O Notation is O(1) ]
ArrayList
- The size, isEmpty, get, set, iterator, and listIterator operations run in constant time. [ Big O Notation is O(1) ] - The add operation runs in amortized constant time [ Big O Notation is O(1) ] , but in worst case (since the array must be resized and copied) adding n elements requires linear time [ Big O Notation is O(n) ] - Performance of remove method is linear time [ Big O Notation is O(n) ] - All of the other operations run in linear time [ Big O Notation is O(n) ]. The constant factor is low compared to that for the LinkedList implementation.
Difference between HashSet and TreeSet ?
HashSet
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TreeSet
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HashSet is under set interface i.e. it does not guarantee for either sorted order or sequence order.
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TreeSet is under set i.e. it provides elements in a sorted order (acceding order).
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We can add any type of elements to hash set.
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We can add only similar types
of elements to tree set.
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Difference between HashMap and Hashtable ?
HashMap
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Hashtable
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HashMap lets you have null values as well as one null key.
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HashTable does not allows null values as key and value.
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The iterator in the HashMap is fail-safe (If you change the map while iterating, you’ll know).
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The enumerator for the Hashtable is not fail-safe.
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HashMap is unsynchronized.
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Hashtable is synchronized.
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Note: Only one NULL is allowed as a key in HashMap. HashMap does not allow multiple keys to be NULL. Nevertheless, it can have multiple NULL values.
What are the differences between the Comparable and Comparator interfaces ?
Comparable
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Comparato
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It uses the compareTo() method.
int objectOne.compareTo(objectTwo).
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It uses the compare() method.
int compare(ObjOne, ObjTwo)
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It is necessary to modify the class whose instance is going to be sorted.
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A separate class can be created in order to sort the instances.
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Only one sort sequence can be created.
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Many sort sequences can be created.
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It is frequently used by the API classes.
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It used by third-party classes to sort instances.
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What is the difference between Enumeration and Iterator?
Enumeration
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Iterator
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Enumeration doesn't have a remove() method
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Iterator has a remove() method
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Enumeration acts as Read-only interface, because it has the methods only to traverse and fetch the objects
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Can be abstract, final, native, static, or synchronized
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Note: So Enumeration is used whenever we want to make Collection objects as Read-only.
What are the advantages of ArrayList over arrays ?
Some of the advantages ArrayList has over arrays are:
It can grow dynamically
It provides more powerful insertion and search mechanisms than arrays.
Difference between ArrayList and Vector ?
ArrayList
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Vector
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ArrayList is NOT synchronized by default.
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Vector List is synchronized by default.
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ArrayList can use only Iterator to access the elements.
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Vector list can use Iterator and Enumeration Interface to access the elements.
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The ArrayList increases its array size by 50 percent if it runs out of room.
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A Vector defaults to doubling the size of its array if it runs out of room
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ArrayList has no default size.
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While vector has a default size of 10.
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