What is the difference between Collection and List in Java? When should I use which?
What is the difference between Collection and List in Java? When should I use
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What is the difference between Collection and List in Java? When should I use which?
First off: a
Listis aCollection. It is a specializedCollection, however.A
Collectionis just that: a collection of items. You can add stuff, remove stuff, iterate over stuff and query how much stuff is in there.A
Listadds the information about a defined sequence of stuff to it: You can get the element at position n, you can add an element at position n, you can remove the element at position n.In a
Collectionyou can’t do that: “the 5th element in this collection” isn’t defined, because there is no defined order.There are other specialized Collections as well, for example a
Setwhich adds the feature that it will never contain the same element twice.