Re: Something Better than ArrayList

From:
Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:56:51 +0100
Message-ID:
<alpine.DEB.2.00.1106212253080.6476@urchin.earth.li>
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On Tue, 21 Jun 2011, Gene Wirchenko wrote:

On Tue, 21 Jun 2011 02:22:46 -0700 (PDT), Paul Cager
<paul.cager@googlemail.com> wrote:

On Jun 21, 6:34?am, Gene Wirchenko <ge...@ocis.net> wrote:

Dear Java'ers:
? ? ?The name of the class is what I need. ?I assume I can find the
docs once I know what it is called.


Others have already pointed you to java.util.Map, which answers your
immediate question. You might also want to have a look at the Java
"Collections" tutorial for more general information:
http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/collections/index.html


    I found it rather dry, but did manage to write a proof-of-concept
program for a symbol table. However, I have to check for duplication
before put()ing. Is there a way to combine a Map and a Set to avoid
this?

    For the Map

  static Map<String,String> SymbolTable=new HashMap<String,String>();

I would like to write something like

  static boolean TryToAdd
   (
   String theKey,
   String theData
   )
     {
     return SymbolTable.put(theKey,theData);
     }

instead of

  static boolean TryToAdd
   (
   String theKey,
   String theData
   )
     {
     if (SymbolTable.containsKey(theKey))
        return false;
     else
        {
        SymbolTable.put(theKey,theData);
        return true;
        }
     }

    Am I missing something or is this not supported?


You can't do it with a normal Map. You can do it with a ConcurrentMap:

http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/ConcurrentMap.html

ConcurrentMap has it because you can't easily build an efficient
threadsafe implementation of putIfAbsent on top of the normal Map
interface. It's a bit of a shame Map doesn't have it, because it's useful
even if you're not dealing with multiple threads!

tom

--
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river
and he's not the same man. -- Heraclitus
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