The Collections Framework

The collections framework is a unified architecture for representing and manipulating collections, enabling them to be manipulated independently of the details of their representation. It reduces programming effort while increasing performance. It enables interoperability among unrelated APIs, reduces effort in designing and learning new APIs, and fosters software reuse. The framework is based on more than a dozen collection interfaces. It includes implementations of these interfaces and algorithms to manipulate them.

The documents in this section are non-normative portions of the Java™ Platform, Standard Edition API Specification.

Overview - An overview of the collections framework.

Annotated API Outline - An annotated outline of the classes and interfaces comprising the collections framework, with links into the API Specification.

Design FAQ - Answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ) about the design of the collections framework.