50+ Java Collections and Generics Interview Questions with Answers

Hello guys, If you are preparing for Java interviews then you may know that Java Generics and Collections are two of the most important topics, particularly Generics where some of the trickiest Java questions can be asked. They are also used to gauge your experience and depth of your Java knowledge, hence it's imperative for both beginners and experienced Java programmers to prepare this topic well. While the Java Collection framework provides an implementation of some command data structures like List, Set, Array, Hash table, Queue, Stack, PriorityQueue, etc, Generics provides Type safety.

How to sort a Map by keys in Java 8 - Example Tutorial

In the last article, I have shown you how to sort a Map by values in Java 8, and in this tutorial, you will learn how to sort a Map by keys like a HashMap, ConcurrentHashMap, LinkedHashmap, or even Hashtable. Theoretically, you cannot sort a Map because it doesn't provide any ordering guarantee. For example, when you iterate over a HashMap, you don't know in which order entries will be traversed because HashMap doesn't provide any ordering. Then, how can you sort a Map which doesn't support order? Well, you can't and that's why you only sort entries of HashMap but you don't store the result back into HasMap or any other Map which doesn't support ordering. If you do so, then sorting will be lost.

How to use TreeSet in Java? SortedSet Example Tutorial

Hello friends, we meet again for our journey of learning Java. Today, we are gonna learn something very fruitful and easy. Hope you all are excited and ready. I would recommend you guys to go through the HashSet article which goes over hashing and what sets are actually as this topic has some of its features. So, What's the wait? Let's start! Continuing our example used in HashSet and reusing it here. Suppose you guys are given the task of storing car names (yes, I love cars :p). Now, how would you store it? This question has already been answered by our HashSet article. The new problem here is, we need to store the names in a naturally sorted manner. As we have a set of String, we need to sort them alphabetically. How to do that?

Difference between Stack and Queue Data Structure in Java? Example

Stack and Queue are two of the important data structures in the programming world and have a variety of usage. As opposed to the array and linked list, which are considered primary data structures, they are secondary data structures that can build using an array or linked list. You can use Stack to solve recursive problems and Queue can be used for ordered processing. The difference between Stack and Queue Data structure is also one of the common questions not only in Java interviews but also in C, C++, and other programming job interviews.

How to remove all elements (empty) from ArrayList in Java? Clear vs RemoveAll Example Tutorial

Many times we want to reset an ArrayList for the reusing purpose, by resetting we mean clearing it or removing all elements. There are two ways to reset an ArrayList in Java, by using the clear() method or calling removeAll(). If your ArrayList is small enough like it contains only 10 or 100 elements then you can use any of these two methods without worrying too much, but, if you have a huge list of lots of objects like an ArrayList containing 10M entries, then the choice of clear() vs removeAll() can make a huge difference in the performance of your Java application.

3 Ways to Convert an Array to ArrayList in Java? Example

How to convert an Array to ArrayList in Java
Have you encountered any situation where you quickly wanted to convert your array to ArrayList or ArrayList to array in Java? I have faced many such situations that motivate me to write these quick Java tips about converting an array to ArrayList and ArrayList to array in Java. Both array and ArrayList are quite common and every Java developer is familiar with this. Former is used to store objects and primitive types while later can only hold objects. The array is part of standard Java fundamental data structure while ArrayList is part of the collection framework in Java.

HashSet in Java – 10 Examples Programs Tutorial

HashSet in Java is a collection that implements the Set interface and is backed by a HashMap. Since HashSet uses HashMap internally it provides constant-time performance for operations like add, remove, contains and size give HashMap has distributed elements properly among the buckets. Java HashSet does not guarantee any insertion orders of the set but it allows null elements. HashSet can be used in place of ArrayList to store the object if you require no duplicate and don't care about insertion order.

How to Find First and Last element in LinkedList Java? Doubly linked list Example

In this article, you will learn how to get the first and last element of a linked list with the help of getFirst() and getLast() of the LinkedList class. If you have programming or even gone to a computer science course you probably know what is a linked list? It's a data structure that allows you to store objects in such a way that you can don't need a big chunk of contiguous memory like another popular data structure array. It works perfectly even if you have a fragmented heap. LinkedList is Java's implementation of this fundamental data structure. 

Difference between ConcurrentHashMap, Hashtable and Synchronized Map in Java

ConcurrentHashMap vs Hashtable vs Synchronized Map
Though all three collection classes are thread-safe and can be used in multi-threaded, concurrent Java application, there is a significant difference between them, which arise from the fact that how they achieve their thread-safety. Hashtable is a legacy class from JDK 1.1 itself, which uses synchronized methods to achieve thread safety. All methods of Hashtable are synchronized which makes them quite slow due to contention if a number of thread increases. Synchronized Map is also not very different than Hashtable and provides similar performance in concurrent Java programs. The only difference between Hashtable and Synchronized Map is that later is not a legacy and you can wrap any Map to create it's synchronized version by using Collections.synchronizedMap() method.

How to use EnumSet in Java with Example

EnumSet is one of the specialized implementations of the Set interface for an enumeration type, introduced in Java 1.5 along with the enumeration type itself. Programmer often stores Enum into common collection classes e.g. HashSet or ArrayList, mostly because they are unaware of this little gem. Even I wasn't aware of this class a few years ago until I come across one of the finest books for Java programmers, Effective Java. It has an Item on EnumSet, which highlights some typical use-cases for this collection class instead of using int variable and bitwise operator. Since Enum constants are unique and have pre-defined lengths, as you can not define a new enum constant at runtime; it allows Java API designers to highly optimize EnumSet.

How to Convert List of Integers to Int Array in Java - Example

So, you have a List of Integers and you want to convert them into int array? Yes, you read it write, not on Integer array but int array. Though in most practical purpose, Integer array can be used in place of int[] because of autoboxing in Java, you still need an int[] if your method accepts it. In Java, you can not typecast an Integer array into an int array. Many Java programmer think about toArray() method from java.util.List to convert a List into Array, but unfortunately, toArray() is useless most of the time. It doesn't allow you to convert List into primitive arrays.

Difference between List and Set in Java Collection? Example

What is the difference between List and Set in Java is a very popular Java collection interview question and an important fundamental concept to remember while using the Collections class in Java. Both List and Set are two of the most important Collection classes Java Program use along with various Map implementations. The basic feature of List and Set are abstracted in the List and Set interface in Java and then various implementations of List and Set adds specific features on top of that e.g. ArrayList in Java is a List implementation backed by Array while LinkedList is another List implementation that works like linked list data-structure.

Enhance For Loop Example and Puzzle in Java

From Java 5 onwards, we have a for-each loop for iterating over collection and array in Java. For each loop allows you to traverse over collection without keeping track of index like traditional for loop, or calling hasNext() method in while loop using Iterator or ListIterator. For-each loop indeed simplified iteration over any Collection or array in Java, but not every Java programmer is aware of some useful details of the for-each loop, which we will see in this tutorial. Unlike other popular items from Java 5 release alias Generics, Autoboxing, and variable arguments, Java developers tend to use for-each loop more often than any other feature, but when asked about how does advanced foreach loop works or what is a basic requirement of using a Collection in the for-each loop, not everyone can answer.

How to declare and initialize a List with values in Java (ArrayList/LinkedList) - Arrays.asList() Example

Hello guys, today, I am going to share with you a useful tip to initialize a List like ArrayList or LinkedList with values, which will help you a lot while writing unit tests and prototypes. Initializing a list while declaring is very convenient for quick use, but unfortunately, Java doesn't provide any programming constructs like the collection literals of Scala, but there is a trick which you can use to declare and initialize a List at the same time. This trick is also known as initializing a List with values. I have used this trick a lot while declaring list for unit testing and writing demo programs to understand an API etc and today I'll you'll also learn that.

How to Sort an HashMap by values in Java 8 - Example Tutorial

In the last article, I have shown you how to sort a Map in Java 8 by keys, and today, I'll teach you how to sort a Map by values using Java 8 features e.g. lambda expression, method reference, streams, and new methods added into the java.util.Comparator and Map.Entry classes. In order to sort any Map, like HashMap, Hashtable, LinkedHashMap, TreemMap, or even ConcurrentHashMap, you can first get a set of entries by using the entrySet() method and then you can get the stream by calling the stream() method. The entrySet()  method returns a Set which inherit the stream() method from the java.util.Collection class. Once you got the stream, you can just call the sorted() method which can sort all Map.Entry objects available in Stream using a Comparator.