The basics of Java collections

The collection family (java.util.Collection) turns up practically everywhere in Java programming. Some of its ground rules and gotchas are buried in the Javadoc, which, unfortunately, not everyone reads or fully understands. The usual points worth knowing are hashCode, capacity, load factor, and collisions.

These properties come up in both map and list implementations, so it pays to understand them in general. An accessible guide is Jack Shirazi's An Introduction to Java Map Collection Classes

Related articles

• (15 January 2004, Jirka Hradil's blog) What should a correct equals() method look like?