This implementation provides constant-time performance for the basic operations (get and put),assuming the hash function disperses the elements properly among the buckets. Iteration over collection views requires time proportional to the “capacity” of the HashMap instance (the number of buckets) plus its size (the number of key-value mappings). Thus,it’s very important not to set the initial capacity too high (or the load factor too low) if iteration performance is important.
An instance of HashMap has two parameters that affect its performance: initial capacity and load factor. The capacity is the number of buckets in the hash table,and the initial capacity is simply the capacity at the time the hash table is created. The load factor is a measure of how full the hash table is allowed to get before its capacity is automatically increased. When the number of entries in the hash table exceeds the product of the load factor and the current capacity,the capacity is roughly doubled by calling the rehash method.
As a general rule,the default load factor (.75) offers a good tradeoff between time and space costs. Higher values decrease the space overhead but increase the lookup cost (reflected in most of the operations of the HashMap class,including get and put). The expected number of entries in the map and its load factor should be taken into account when setting its initial capacity,so as to minimize the number of rehash operations. If the initial capacity is greater than the maximum number of entries divided by the load factor,no rehash operations will ever occur.