RandomAccess在JAVA中的应用

/**
 * Marker interface used by <tt>List</tt> implementations to indicate that
 * they support fast (generally constant time) random access.  The primary
 * purpose of this interface is to allow generic algorithms to alter their
 * behavior to provide good performance when applied to either random or
 * sequential access lists.
 *
 * <p>The best algorithms for manipulating random access lists (such as
 * <tt>ArrayList</tt>) can produce quadratic behavior when applied to
 * sequential access lists (such as <tt>LinkedList</tt>).  Generic list
 * algorithms are encouraged to check whether the given list is an
 * <tt>instanceof</tt> this interface before applying an algorithm that would
 * provide poor performance if it were applied to a sequential access list,
 * and to alter their behavior if necessary to guarantee acceptable
 * performance.
 *
 * <p>It is recognized that the distinction between random and sequential
 * access is often fuzzy.  For example, some <tt>List</tt> implementations
 * provide asymptotically linear access times if they get huge, but constant
 * access times in practice.  Such a <tt>List</tt> implementation
 * should generally implement this interface.  As a rule of thumb, a
 * <tt>List</tt> implementation should implement this interface if,
 * for typical instances of the class, this loop:
 * <pre>
 *     for (int i=0, n=list.size(); i &lt; n; i++)
 *         list.get(i);
 * </pre>
 * runs faster than this loop:
 * <pre>
 *     for (Iterator i=list.iterator(); i.hasNext(); )
 *         i.next();
 * </pre>
 *
 * <p>This interface is a member of the
 * <a href="{@docRoot}/../technotes/guides/collections/index.html">
 * Java Collections Framework</a>.
 *
 * @since 1.4
 */
public interface RandomAccess {
}

RandomAccess从字面意义上来说代表随机访问，那么什么是随机访问？在JAVA中ArrayList实现了RandomAccess接口，ArrayList底层数据存放是以数组的形式，通过数组下标就可以随机访问到数据。而另一种通过迭代器也可以访问到数据，但是迭代器是有序的，不是随机。所以在ArrayList中以下面这种形式访问效率非常高（推荐）

    for (int i = 0, n = list1.size(); i < n; i++) {
            list1.get(i);
    }

而不是下面这种做法：

    for (Iterator<?> i = list.iterator(); i.hasNext(); ){
        i.next();
    }

如果对于一个有序的list，比如LinkedList，使用迭代器的方式去遍历能大大减少时间。

对于一个未知的List进行访问，我们最好采用下面这种做法，弥补性能上的损失：

    if (list1 instanceof RandomAccess) {
        for (int i = 0, n = list1.size(); i < n; i++) {
            list1.get(i);
        }
    } else {
        for (Iterator<?> i = list1.iterator(); i.hasNext(); ) {
            i.next();
        }
    }