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In computer programming, a collection is an abstract data type that is a grouping of items that can be used in a polymorphic way. Often, the items are of the same data type such as int or string . Sometimes the items derive from a common type; even deriving from the most general type of a programming language such as object or variant .
Collection implementations in pre-JDK 1.2 versions of the Java platform included few data structure classes, but did not contain a collections framework. [4] The standard methods for grouping Java objects were via the array, the Vector, and the Hashtable classes, which unfortunately were not easy to extend, and did not implement a standard member interface.
Unlike in an array, a list can expand and shrink. In computing, lists are easier to implement than sets. A finite set in the mathematical sense can be realized as a list with additional restrictions; that is, duplicate elements are disallowed and order is irrelevant. Sorting the list speeds up determining if a given item is already in the set ...
As of Java 6, Java's Collections Framework provides a new Deque interface that provides the functionality of insertion and removal at both ends. It is implemented by classes such as ArrayDeque (also new in Java 6) and LinkedList , providing the dynamic array and linked list implementations, respectively.
Apache Commons Collections provides a MultiMap interface for Java. [5] It also provides a MultiValueMap implementing class that makes a MultiMap out of a Map object and a type of Collection. [6] Google Guava provides a Multimap interface and implementations of it. [7]
Additionally, unless the list is regularly pruned to remove elements with duplicate keys, multiple values associated with the same key will increase the size of the list, and thus the time to search, without providing any compensatory advantage. One advantage of association lists is that a new element can be added in constant time.
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Selection sort can also be used on list structures that make add and remove efficient, such as a linked list. In this case it is more common to remove the minimum element from the remainder of the list, and then insert it at the end of the values sorted so far. For example: