JDK 5 Changed the Collections Framework

JDK 5 Changed the Collections Framework

When JDK 5 was released, some fundamental changes were made to the Collections Framework that significantly increased its power and streamlined its use. These changes include the addition of generics, autoboxing/unboxing, and the for-each style for loop. Although JDK 8 is three major Java releases after JDK 5, the effects of the JDK 5 features were so profound that they still warrant special attention. The main reason is that you may encounter pre-JDK 5 code. Understanding the effects and reasons for the changes is important if you will be maintaining or updating older code.

Generics Fundamentally Changed the Collections Framework

The addition of generics caused a significant change to the Collections Framework because the entire Collections Framework was reengineered for it. All collections are now generic, and many of the methods that operate on collections take generic type parameters. Simply put, the addition of generics affected every part of the Collections Framework.

Generics added the one feature that collections had been missing: type safety. Prior to generics, all collections stored Object references, which meant that any collection could store any type of object. Thus, it was possible to accidentally store incompatible types in a collection. Doing so could result in run-time type mismatch errors. With generics, it is possible to explicitly state the type of data being stored, and run-time type mismatch errors can be avoided.

Although the addition of generics changed the declarations of most of its classes and interfaces, and several of their methods, overall, the Collections Framework still works the same as it did prior to generics. Of course, to gain the advantages that generics bring collections, older code will need to be rewritten. This is also important because pre-generics code will generate warning messages when compiled by a modern Java compiler. To eliminate these warnings, you will need to add type information to all your collections code.

Autoboxing Facilitates the Use of Primitive Types

Autoboxing/unboxing facilitates the storing of primitive types in collections. As you will see, a collection can store only references, not primitive values. In the past, if you wanted to store a primitive value, such as an int, in a collection, you had to manually box it into its type wrapper. When the value was retrieved, it needed to be manually unboxed (by using an explicit cast) into its proper primitive type. Because of autoboxing/unboxing, Java can automatically perform the proper boxing and unboxing needed when storing or retrieving primitive types. There is no need to manually perform these operations.

The For-Each Style for Loop