Interface Map
An object that maps keys to values. A map cannot contain duplicate keys; each key can map to at most one value.
This interface takes the place of the Dictionary class, which was a totally abstract class rather than an interface.
The Map interface provides three collection views, which allow a map’s contents to be viewed as a set of keys, collection of values, or set of key-value mappings. The order of a map is defined as the order in which the iterators on the map’s collection views return their elements. Some map implementations, like the TreeMap class, make specific guarantees as to their order; others, like the HashMap class, do not.
Note: great care must be exercised if mutable objects are used as map keys. The behavior of a map is not specified if the value of an object is changed in a manner that affects equals comparisons while the object is a key in the map. A special case of this prohibition is that it is not permissible for a map to contain itself as a key. While it is permissible for a map to contain itself as a value, extreme caution is advised: the equals and hashCode methods are no longer well defined on such a map.
All general-purpose map implementation classes should provide two «standard» constructors: a void (no arguments) constructor which creates an empty map, and a constructor with a single argument of type Map , which creates a new map with the same key-value mappings as its argument. In effect, the latter constructor allows the user to copy any map, producing an equivalent map of the desired class. There is no way to enforce this recommendation (as interfaces cannot contain constructors) but all of the general-purpose map implementations in the JDK comply.
The «destructive» methods contained in this interface, that is, the methods that modify the map on which they operate, are specified to throw UnsupportedOperationException if this map does not support the operation. If this is the case, these methods may, but are not required to, throw an UnsupportedOperationException if the invocation would have no effect on the map. For example, invoking the putAll(Map) method on an unmodifiable map may, but is not required to, throw the exception if the map whose mappings are to be «superimposed» is empty.
Some map implementations have restrictions on the keys and values they may contain. For example, some implementations prohibit null keys and values, and some have restrictions on the types of their keys. Attempting to insert an ineligible key or value throws an unchecked exception, typically NullPointerException or ClassCastException . Attempting to query the presence of an ineligible key or value may throw an exception, or it may simply return false; some implementations will exhibit the former behavior and some will exhibit the latter. More generally, attempting an operation on an ineligible key or value whose completion would not result in the insertion of an ineligible element into the map may throw an exception or it may succeed, at the option of the implementation. Such exceptions are marked as «optional» in the specification for this interface.
Many methods in Collections Framework interfaces are defined in terms of the equals method. For example, the specification for the containsKey(Object key) method says: «returns true if and only if this map contains a mapping for a key k such that (key==null ? k==null : key.equals(k)) .» This specification should not be construed to imply that invoking Map.containsKey with a non-null argument key will cause key.equals(k) to be invoked for any key k . Implementations are free to implement optimizations whereby the equals invocation is avoided, for example, by first comparing the hash codes of the two keys. (The Object.hashCode() specification guarantees that two objects with unequal hash codes cannot be equal.) More generally, implementations of the various Collections Framework interfaces are free to take advantage of the specified behavior of underlying Object methods wherever the implementor deems it appropriate.
Some map operations which perform recursive traversal of the map may fail with an exception for self-referential instances where the map directly or indirectly contains itself. This includes the clone() , equals() , hashCode() and toString() methods. Implementations may optionally handle the self-referential scenario, however most current implementations do not do so.
Unmodifiable Maps
- They are unmodifiable. Keys and values cannot be added, removed, or updated. Calling any mutator method on the Map will always cause UnsupportedOperationException to be thrown. However, if the contained keys or values are themselves mutable, this may cause the Map to behave inconsistently or its contents to appear to change.
- They disallow null keys and values. Attempts to create them with null keys or values result in NullPointerException .
- They are serializable if all keys and values are serializable.
- They reject duplicate keys at creation time. Duplicate keys passed to a static factory method result in IllegalArgumentException .
- The iteration order of mappings is unspecified and is subject to change.
- They are value-based. Programmers should treat instances that are equal as interchangeable and should not use them for synchronization, or unpredictable behavior may occur. For example, in a future release, synchronization may fail. Callers should make no assumptions about the identity of the returned instances. Factories are free to create new instances or reuse existing ones.
- They are serialized as specified on the Serialized Form page.
This interface is a member of the Java Collections Framework.
Class HashMap
Type Parameters: K — the type of keys maintained by this map V — the type of mapped values All Implemented Interfaces: Serializable , Cloneable , Map Direct Known Subclasses: LinkedHashMap , PrinterStateReasons
Hash table based implementation of the Map interface. This implementation provides all of the optional map operations, and permits null values and the null key. (The HashMap class is roughly equivalent to Hashtable , except that it is unsynchronized and permits nulls.) This class makes no guarantees as to the order of the map; in particular, it does not guarantee that the order will remain constant over time.
This implementation provides constant-time 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.
An instance of HashMap 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. The load factor is a measure of how full the hash table is allowed to get before its capacity is automatically increased. When the number of entries in the hash table exceeds the product of the load factor and the current capacity, the hash table is rehashed (that is, internal data structures are rebuilt) so that the hash table has approximately twice the number of buckets.
As a general rule, the default load factor (.75) offers a good tradeoff between time and space costs. Higher values decrease the space overhead but increase the lookup cost (reflected in most of the operations of the HashMap class, including get and put ). The expected number of entries in the map and its load factor should be taken into account when setting its initial capacity, so as to minimize the number of rehash operations. If the initial capacity is greater than the maximum number of entries divided by the load factor, no rehash operations will ever occur.
If many mappings are to be stored in a HashMap instance, creating it with a sufficiently large capacity will allow the mappings to be stored more efficiently than letting it perform automatic rehashing as needed to grow the table. Note that using many keys with the same hashCode() is a sure way to slow down performance of any hash table. To ameliorate impact, when keys are Comparable , this class may use comparison order among keys to help break ties.
Note that this implementation is not synchronized. If multiple threads access a hash map concurrently, and at least one of the threads modifies the map structurally, it must be synchronized externally. (A structural modification is any operation that adds or deletes one or more mappings; merely changing the value associated with a key that an instance already contains is not a structural modification.) This is typically accomplished by synchronizing on some object that naturally encapsulates the map. If no such object exists, the map should be «wrapped» using the Collections.synchronizedMap method. This is best done at creation time, to prevent accidental unsynchronized access to the map:
Map m = Collections.synchronizedMap(new HashMap(. ));
The iterators returned by all of this class’s «collection view methods» are fail-fast: if the map is structurally modified at any time after the iterator is created, in any way except through the iterator’s own remove method, the iterator will throw a ConcurrentModificationException . Thus, in the face of concurrent modification, the iterator fails quickly and cleanly, rather than risking arbitrary, non-deterministic behavior at an undetermined time in the future.
Note that the fail-fast behavior of an iterator cannot be guaranteed as it is, generally speaking, impossible to make any hard guarantees in the presence of unsynchronized concurrent modification. Fail-fast iterators throw ConcurrentModificationException on a best-effort basis. Therefore, it would be wrong to write a program that depended on this exception for its correctness: the fail-fast behavior of iterators should be used only to detect bugs.
This class is a member of the Java Collections Framework.