| This class implements the Set interface, backed by a hash table
(actually a HashMap instance). It makes no guarantees as to the
iteration order of the set; in particular, it does not guarantee that the
order will remain constant over time. This class permits the null
element.
This class offers constant time performance for the basic operations
(add, remove, contains and size),
assuming the hash function disperses the elements properly among the
buckets. Iterating over this set requires time proportional to the sum of
the HashSet instance's size (the number of elements) plus the
"capacity" of the backing HashMap instance (the number of
buckets). Thus, it's very important not to set the initial capacity too
high (or the load factor too low) if iteration performance is important.
Note that this implementation is not synchronized. If multiple
threads access a set concurrently, and at least one of the threads modifies
the set, it must be synchronized externally. This is typically
accomplished by synchronizing on some object that naturally encapsulates
the set. If no such object exists, the set should be "wrapped" using the
Collections.synchronizedSet method. This is best done at creation
time, to prevent accidental unsynchronized access to the HashSet
instance:
Set s = Collections.synchronizedSet(new HashSet(...));
The iterators returned by this class's iterator method are
fail-fast: if the set is modified at any time after the iterator is
created, in any way except through the iterator's own remove
method, the Iterator throws 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.
author:
Josh Bloch
version:
1.19, 02/02/00
See Also: Collection
See Also: Set
See Also: TreeSet
See Also: Collections.synchronizedSet(Set)
See Also: HashMap
since:
1.2 | 