Java collections framework

The Java collections framework is a set of classes and interfaces that implement commonly reusable collection data structures. The Java collections framework is a set of classes and interfaces that implement commonly reusable collection data structures. Although referred to as a framework, it works in a manner of a library. The collections framework provides both interfaces that define various collections and classes that implement them. Collections and arrays are similar in that they both hold references to objects and they can be managed as a group. However, unlike arrays, collections do not need to be assigned a certain capacity when instantiated. Collections can also grow and shrink in size automatically when objects are added or removed. Collections cannot hold basic data type elements (primitive types) such as int, long, or double; instead, they hold Wrapper Classes such as Integer, Long, or Double. Collection implementations in pre-JDK 1.2 versions of the Java platform included few data structure classes, but did not contain a collections framework. The standard methods for grouping Java objects were via the array, the Vector, and the Hashtable classes, which unfortunately were not easy to extend, and did not implement a standard member interface. To address the need for reusable collection data structures, several independent frameworks were developed, the most used being Doug Lea's Collections package, and ObjectSpace Generic Collection Library (JGL), whose main goal was consistency with the C++ Standard Template Library (STL). The collections framework was designed and developed primarily by Joshua Bloch, and was introduced in JDK 1.2. It reused many ideas and classes from Doug Lea's Collections package, which was deprecated as a result. Sun Microsystems chose not to use the ideas of JGL, because they wanted a compact framework, and consistency with C++ was not one of their goals. Doug Lea later developed a concurrency package, comprising new Collection-related classes. An updated version of these concurrency utilities was included in JDK 5.0 as of JSR 166. Almost all collections in Java are derived from the java.util.Collection interface. Collection defines the basic parts of all collections. The interface states the add() and remove() methods for adding to and removing from a collection respectively. Also required is the toArray() method, which converts the collection into a simple array of all the elements in the collection. Finally, the contains() method checks if a specified element is in the collection. The Collection interface is a subinterface of java.lang.Iterable, so any Collection may be the target of a for-each statement. (The Iterable interface provides the iterator() method used by for-each statements.) All collections have an iterator that goes through all of the elements in the collection. Additionally, Collection is a generic. Any collection can be written to store any class. For example, Collection<String> can hold strings, and the elements from the collection can be used as strings without any casting required. Note that the angled brackets < > can hold a type argument that specifies which type the collection holds.