Resizable-array implementation of the
List interface. Implements
all optional list operations, and permits all elements, including
null. In addition to implementing the
List interface,
this class provides methods to manipulate the size of the array that is
used internally to store the list. (This class is roughly equivalent to
Vector, except that it is unsynchronized.)
The size, isEmpty, get, set,
iterator, and listIterator operations run in constant
time. The add operation runs in amortized constant time,
that is, adding n elements requires O(n) time. All of the other operations
run in linear time (roughly speaking). The constant factor is low compared
to that for the LinkedList implementation.
Each ArrayList instance has a capacity. The capacity is
the size of the array used to store the elements in the list. It is always
at least as large as the list size. As elements are added to an ArrayList,
its capacity grows automatically. The details of the growth policy are not
specified beyond the fact that adding an element has constant amortized
time cost.
An application can increase the capacity of an ArrayList instance
before adding a large number of elements using the ensureCapacity
operation. This may reduce the amount of incremental reallocation.
Note that this implementation is not synchronized.
If multiple threads access an ArrayList instance concurrently,
and at least one of the threads modifies the list structurally, it
must be synchronized externally. (A structural modification is
any operation that adds or deletes one or more elements, or explicitly
resizes the backing array; merely setting the value of an element is not
a structural modification.) This is typically accomplished by
synchronizing on some object that naturally encapsulates the list.
If no such object exists, the list should be "wrapped" using the
Collections.synchronizedList
method. This is best done at creation time, to prevent accidental
unsynchronized access to the list:
List list = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList(...));
The iterators returned by this class's iterator and
listIterator methods are fail-fast: if the list is
structurally modified at any time after the iterator is created, in any way
except through the iterator's own remove or add methods,
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.
