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Describe set interface from java collection.md

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Set interface

A collection that contains no duplicate elements. More formally, sets contain no pair of elements e1 and e2 such that e1.equals(e2), and at most one null element. As implied by its name, this interface models the mathematical set abstraction.

The Set interface places additional stipulations, beyond those inherited from the Collection interface, on the contracts of all constructors and on the contracts of the add, equals and hashCode methods. Declarations for other inherited methods are also included here for convenience. (The specifications accompanying these declarations have been tailored to the Set interface, but they do not contain any additional stipulations.)

The additional stipulation on constructors is, not surprisingly, that all constructors must create a set that contains no duplicate elements (as defined above).

Note: Great care must be exercised if mutable objects are used as set elements. The behavior of a set is not specified if the value of an object is changed in a manner that affects equals comparisons while the object is an element in the set. A special case of this prohibition is that it is not permissible for a set to contain itself as an element.

Some set implementations have restrictions on the elements that they may contain. For example, some implementations prohibit null elements, and some have restrictions on the types of their elements. Attempting to add an ineligible element throws an unchecked exception, typically NullPointerException or ClassCastException. Attempting to query the presence of an ineligible element 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 element whose completion would not result in the insertion of an ineligible element into the set 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.

Most used implementing classes

  • HashSet. 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.

  • TreeSet. TreeSet class implements the Set interface that uses a tree for storage. It inherits AbstractSet class and implements the NavigableSet interface. The elements are ordered using their natural ordering, or by a Comparator provided at set creation time, depending on which constructor is used.

  • LinkedHashSet. Hash table and linked list implementation of the Set interface, with predictable iteration order. This implementation differs from HashSet in that it maintains a doubly-linked list running through all of its entries. This linked list defines the iteration ordering, which is the order in which elements were inserted into the set (insertion-order). Note that insertion order is not affected if an element is re-inserted into the set. (An element e is reinserted into a set s if s.add(e) is invoked when s.contains(e) would return true immediately prior to the invocation.)

  • EnumSet. A specialized Set implementation for use with enum types. All of the elements in an enum set must come from a single enum type that is specified, explicitly or implicitly, when the set is created. Enum sets are represented internally as bit vectors. This representation is extremely compact and efficient. The space and time performance of this class should be good enough to allow its use as a high-quality, typesafe alternative to traditional int-based "bit flags." Even bulk operations (such as containsAll and retainAll) should run very quickly if their argument is also an enum set.

Links

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Set.html
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/HashSet.html
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/TreeSet.html
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/LinkedHashSet.html
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/EnumSet.html
https://www.programiz.com/java-programming/set

Next questions

What do you know about EnumSet?
What do you know about HashSet
What do you know about LinkedHashSet
What do you know about TreeSet

Further reading

The Set Interface