Difference between HashMap and HashTable? Can we make hashmap synchronized?

This question oftenly asked in interview to check whether candidate understand correct usage of collection classes and aware of alternative solutions available.

1. The HashMap class is roughly equivalent to Hashtable, except that it is non synchronized and permits nulls. (HashMap allows null values as key and value whereas Hashtable doesn't allow nulls).

2. HashMap does not guarantee that the order of the map will remain constant over time.

3. HashMap is non synchronized whereas Hashtable is synchronized.

4. Iterator in the HashMap is fail-fast while the enumerator for the Hashtable is not and throw ConcurrentModificationException if any other Thread modifies the map structurally by adding or removing any element except Iterator's own remove() method. But this is not a guaranteed behavior and will be done by JVM on best effort.

Note on Some Important Terms

1)Synchronized means only one thread can modify a hash table at one point of time. Basically, it means that any thread before performing an update on a hashtable will have to acquire a lock on the object while others will wait for lock to be released.

2)Fail-safe is relevant from the context of iterators. If an iterator has been created on a collection object and some other thread tries to modify the collection object "structurally", a concurrent modification exception wjavascript:void(0)ill be thrown. It is possible for other threads though to invoke "set" method since it doesn't modify the collection "structurally". However, if prior to calling "set", the collection has been modified structurally, "IllegalArgumentException" will be thrown.

3)Structurally modification means deleting or inserting element which could effectively change the structure of map.

HashMap can be synchronized by

Map m = Collections.synchronizeMap(hashMap);

Hope this will be useful.

java中HashMap,LinkedHashMap,TreeMap，HashTable的区别
java为数据结构中的映射定义了一个接口java.util.Map;它有四个实现类,分别是HashMap Hashtable LinkedHashMap 和TreeMap
Map主要用于存储健值对，根据键得到值，因此不允许键重复(重复了覆盖了),但允许值重复。
Hashmap 是一个最常用的Map,它根据键的HashCode 值存储数据,根据键可以直接获取它的值，具有很快的访问速度，遍历时，取得数据的顺序是完全随机的。HashMap最多只允许一条记录的键为Null;允许多条记录的值为 Null;HashMap不支持线程的同步，即任一时刻可以有多个线程同时写HashMap;可能会导致数据的不一致。如果需要同步，可以用 Collections的synchronizedMap方法使HashMap具有同步的能力，或者使用ConcurrentHashMap。
Hashtable与 HashMap类似,它继承自Dictionary类，不同的是:它不允许记录的键或者值为空;它支持线程的同步，即任一时刻只有一个线程能写Hashtable,因此也导致了 Hashtable在写入时会比较慢。
LinkedHashMap保存了记录的插入顺序，在用Iterator遍历LinkedHashMap时，先得到的记录肯定是先插入的.也可以在构造时用带参数，按照应用次数排序。在遍历的时候会比HashMap慢，不过有种情况例外，当HashMap容量很大，实际数据较少时，遍历起来可能会比LinkedHashMap慢，因为LinkedHashMap的遍历速度只和实际数据有关，和容量无关，而HashMap的遍历速度和他的容量有关。
TreeMap实现SortMap接口，能够把它保存的记录根据键排序,默认是按键值的升序排序，也可以指定排序的比较器，当用Iterator 遍历TreeMap时，得到的记录是排过序的。

一般情况下，我们用的最多的是HashMap,HashMap里面存入的键值对在取出的时候是随机的,它根据键的HashCode值存储数据,根据键可以直接获取它的值，具有很快的访问速度。在Map 中插入、删除和定位元素，HashMap 是最好的选择。
TreeMap取出来的是排序后的键值对。但如果您要按自然顺序或自定义顺序遍历键，那么TreeMap会更好。
LinkedHashMap 是HashMap的一个子类，如果需要输出的顺序和输入的相同,那么用LinkedHashMap可以实现,它还可以按读取顺序来排列，像连接池中可以应用。
参考资料：http://woshixushigang.iteye.com/blog/962587