Collections -- ArrayList vs LinkedList

Collection

The collection interface provides the basic operations for adding and removing elements in a collection. The add method adds an element to the collection. The addAll method adds all the elements in the specified collection to this collection. The remove method removes and element from the collection. The removeAll method removes the elements from this collection that are present in the specified collection. The retainAll method retains the elements in this collection that are also present in the specified collection. All these methods return boolean. The return value is true if the collection is changed as a result of the method execution. The clear() method simply removes all the elements from the collection.

The Collection interface provides various query operations. The size method returns the number of elements in the collection. The contains method checks whether the collection contains the specified element. The containsAll method checks whether the collection contains all the elements in the specified collection. The isEmpty method returns true if the collection is empty.

The Collection interface provides the toArray() method, which returns an array representation for the collection.

Iterators

Each collection has an Iterator object that can be used to traverse all the elements in the collection.

ArrayList & LinkedList

The critical difference between ArrayList and LinkedList pertains to internal implementation, which affects their performance. ArrayList is efficient for retrieving elements and LinkedList is efficient for inserting and removing elements at the beginning of the list. Both have the same performance for inserting and removing elements in the middle or at the end of the list.