Daily Archives: May 12, 2019

Misc Questions in Collections

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1.Why we are unable to add primitives as generic type
Allowed

 List<Integer> arrAges = new ArrayList<Integer>();

Not allowed

 List<int> arrAges = new ArrayList<int>();

This is to maintain backwards compatibility with previous JVM runtimes in the sense it could be referred by parent class instance Object. Generics in Java are encountered at compile time The compiler converts from generic type to right type as shown in the example below

List<ClassA> list = new ArrayList<ClassA>();
list.add(new ClassA());
ClassA a = list.get(0);

will be turned in to

List list = new ArrayList();
list.Add(new ClassA());
ClassA a = (ClassA)list.get(0);

So anything that is used as generics has to be convert able to Object (in this example get(0) returns an Object), and the primitive types aren’t. So they can’t be used in generics.

2.How to have a Ordered Collections

  1. keep the insertion order: LinkedHashSet and CopyOnWriteArraySet (thread-safe)
  2. keep the items sorted within the set: TreeSet, EnumSet (specific to enums) and ConcurrentSkipListSet (thread-safe)

Everything about Tree

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Similarities between TreeMap and TreeSet in Java

  1. Both TreeMap and TreeSet are sorted data structure, which means they keep there element in predefined Sorted order. Sorting order can be natural sorting order defined by Comparable interface or custom sorting Order defined by Comparator interface. Both TreeMap and TreeSet has overloaded constructor which accept a Comparator, if provided all elements inside TreeSet or TreeMap will be compared and Sorted using this Comparator.
  2. Both TreeSet and TreeMap implements base interfaces e.g. TreeSet implements Collection and Set interface so that they can be passed to method where a Collection is expected and TreeMap implements java.util.Map interface, which means you can pass it when a Map is expected
  3. TreeSet is practically implemented using TreeMap instance, similar to HashSet which is internally backed by HashMap instance.
  4. Both TreeMap and TreeSet are non synchronized Collection, hence can not be shared between multiple threads. You can make both TreeSet and TreeMap synchronized by wrapping them into Synchronized collection by calling Collections.synchroinzedMap() method.
  5. Iterator returned by TreeMap and TreeSet are fail-fast, means they will throw ConcurrentModificationException when TreeMap or TreeSet is modified structurally once Iterator is created.
  6. Both TreeMap and TreeSet are slower than there Hash counter part like HashSet and HashMap and instead of providing constant time performance for add, remove and get operation they provide performance in O(log(n)) order.

TreeSet vs TreeMap

  1. Major difference between TreeSet and TreeMap is that TreeSet implements Set interface while TreeMap implements Map interface in Java.
  2. TreeMap and TreeSet is the way they store objects. TreeSet stores only one object while TreeMap uses two objects called key and Value. Objects in TreeSet are sorted while keys in TreeMap remain in sorted Order.
  3. former implements NavigableSet while later implements NavigableMap in Java.
  4. duplicate objects are not allowed in TreeSet but duplicates values are allowed in TreeMap.

Everything about HashMap

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1.How to get elements from HashMap

public static void printMap(Map mp) 
{
    Iterator it = mp.entrySet().iterator();

    while (it.hasNext()) 
    {
        Map.Entry pairs = (Map.Entry)it.next();
        System.out.println(pairs.getKey() + " = " + pairs.getValue());

        //Avoids a ConcurrentModificationException
        it.remove(); 
    }
}

2.Adding keys to HashMap Finding Next Key
To find the next key while using HashMap with Integer as Key the following function can be used.

  1. Iterate through List of Keys
  2. Sort the Keys
  3. Find the Highest value by looking into Key at size-1
  4. The next key to be used is received by adding 1 to Key(lastMaxElem) at size-1 
private Integer getNextKey()
{
    List<Integer> keyList = new ArrayList<Integer>();
    int lastMaxElem = 0;
		
    HashMap WaterfallHM = (HashMap) getFromWorkFlowScope("WaterfallHM");		
    Set<Integer> keys = WaterfallHM.keySet();
        
    for ( Integer key : keys) {
	keyList.add(key);
    }
		
    Collections.sort(keyList); // Sort the arraylist
    lastMaxElem = keyList.get(keyList.size() - 1);
    lastMaxElem++; 
		
    return new Integer(lastMaxElem);
}

3.How to Initialize a Constants in HashMap

public class Test 
{
    private static final Map<Integer, String> MY_MAP = createMap();

    private static Map<Integer, String> createMap() {
        Map<Integer, String> result = new HashMap<Integer, String>();
        result.put(1, "one");
        result.put(2, "two");
        return Collections.unmodifiableMap(result);
    }
}

4.Why Map Interface doesnot extend Collections Framework
Collection assume elements of one value. Map assumes entries of key/value pairs. They could have been engineered to re-use the same common interface however some methods they implement are incompatible e.g.

Collection.remove(Object) - removes an element.
Map.remove(Object) - removes by key, not by entry.

There are some methods in common; size(), isEmpty(), clear(), putAll/addAll()

Collection interface is largely incompatible with the Map interface. If Map extended Collection, what would the add(Object) method do

5.Why need ConcurrentHashMap and CopyOnWriteArrayList
he synchronized collections classes, Hashtable, and Vector, and the synchronized wrapper classes, Collections.synchronizedMap() and Collections.synchronizedList(), provide a basic conditionally thread-safe implementation of Map and List. However, several factors make them unsuitable for use in highly concurrent applications, for example, their single collection-wide lock is an impediment to scalability and it often becomes necessary to lock a collection for a considerable time during iteration to prevent ConcurrentModificationException.ConcurrentHashMap(uses Segments) and CopyOnWriteArrayList implementations provide much higher concurrency while preserving thread safety, with some minor compromises in their promises to callers.