Introduction
Vector/Enumeration
Hashtable,HashMap
   Properties
Collections
Iterator/ArrayList
Generics
Preferences API
  Demo 1
Concurrency Utils
Enumerated Type
Arrays Class
String Tools
  String
  StringBuffer
  StringBuilder
  StringTokenizer
  String.split()
Calendar,Date,Time
  Demo 2
  Demo 3
Other Utilities
Exercises

Hashtables are associative arrays with key-value pairings. Presentation of the key retrieves the value. Both the key and the value must be a Object derived, i.e. primitive values must be represented by their wrapper classes, e.g. Integer for an int value.

The methods

• put (Object key, Object value)
  
• get (Object key)
  
• remove (Object key)

are the methods for entering new pairs, retrieving and removing them.

For example,

  Hashtable dates = new Hashtable ();
  dates.put ("Christmas", new Date ("25 Dec 99");
  dates.put ("New Years ", new Date ("1 Jan 00");
  dates.put ("Halloween", new Date ("31 Oct 99");

  Date date = dates.get ("Christmas");
  dates.remove ("Halloween");

The Hashtable can return enumerations for both the keys and the values. E.g.:

 for (Enumeration e = dates.keys (); e.hasMoreElements ();) {
      System.out.println (e.nextElement ().toString ());
 }

Can test for the presence of a particular key:

if (dates.containsKey ("Thanksgiving")) {...}

Hashtables rely on the hashcode() method derived from Object. This hashcode is a unique numerical value derived from the object contents.

The hashcode() can be overriden, which can be useful if you want to allow for equivalent objects, by your definition, to have equivalent hashcode values. Otherwise, they will have different values.

Properties Class

The Properties class inherits from Hashtable. Instances of Properties typically represent persistent values describing something such as system settings. For example, the System.getProperties() method returns a system properties table with various key/value pairs that describe the platform the program is running on. This is discussed further in the Chapter 23: System Properties section.

You can create your own properties tables to maintain, for example, the preferences for a large complex program with many parameters and switch settings. The tables can be saved/loaded to/from a file. You might also keep a secondary table with default values.

HashMap Class

The HashMap class came with the Collections Framework in Java 1.2. It provides essentially the same capabilities as Hashtable except that it can store null references and its methods are not synchronized. When synchronization is not needed, then the HashMap is to be preferred over Hashtable since the former performs faster.

References & Web Resources

• Chapter 10: Java : Collections Framework
• Using Properties to Manage Program Attributes - Java Tutorial

Latest update: Nov. 18, 2004

              Tech
ArbitaryPrecision
   BigInteger
   BigDecimal
Bit Handling
Exercises

           Physics
Data Gen&Analysis
  Demo 1
  Demo 2
Exercises