JavaTM 2 Platform
Std. Ed. v1.4.0

java.util
Class AbstractSet

java.lang.Object
  |
  +--java.util.AbstractCollection
        |
        +--java.util.AbstractSet
All Implemented Interfaces:
Collection, Set
Direct Known Subclasses:
HashSet, TreeSet

public abstract class AbstractSet
extends AbstractCollection
implements Set

This class provides a skeletal implementation of the Set interface to minimize the effort required to implement this interface.

The process of implementing a set by extending this class is identical to that of implementing a Collection by extending AbstractCollection, except that all of the methods and constructors in subclasses of this class must obey the additional constraints imposed by the Set interface (for instance, the add method must not permit addition of multiple intances of an object to a set).

Note that this class does not override any of the implementations from the AbstractCollection class. It merely adds implementations for equals and hashCode.

Since:
1.2
See Also:
Collection, AbstractCollection, Set

Constructor Summary
protected AbstractSet()
          Sole constructor.
 
Method Summary
 boolean equals(Object o)
          Compares the specified object with this set for equality.
 int hashCode()
          Returns the hash code value for this set.
 boolean removeAll(Collection c)
          Removes from this set all of its elements that are contained in the specified collection (optional operation).
 
Methods inherited from class java.util.AbstractCollection
add, addAll, clear, contains, containsAll, isEmpty, iterator, remove, retainAll, size, toArray, toArray, toString
 
Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object
clone, finalize, getClass, notify, notifyAll, wait, wait, wait
 
Methods inherited from interface java.util.Set
add, addAll, clear, contains, containsAll, isEmpty, iterator, remove, retainAll, size, toArray, toArray
 

Constructor Detail

AbstractSet

protected AbstractSet()
Sole constructor. (For invocation by subclass constructors, typically implicit.)

Method Detail

equals

public boolean equals(Object o)
Compares the specified object with this set for equality. Returns true if the given object is also a set, the two sets have the same size, and every member of the given set is contained in this set. This ensures that the equals method works properly across different implementations of the Set interface.

This implementation first checks if the specified object is this set; if so it returns true. Then, it checks if the specified object is a set whose size is identical to the size of this set; if not, it it returns false. If so, it returns containsAll((Collection) o).

Specified by:
equals in interface Set
Overrides:
equals in class Object
Parameters:
o - Object to be compared for equality with this set.
Returns:
true if the specified object is equal to this set.

hashCode

public int hashCode()
Returns the hash code value for this set. The hash code of a set is defined to be the sum of the hash codes of the elements in the set. This ensures that s1.equals(s2) implies that s1.hashCode()==s2.hashCode() for any two sets s1 and s2, as required by the general contract of Object.hashCode.

This implementation enumerates over the set, calling the hashCode method on each element in the collection, and adding up the results.

Specified by:
hashCode in interface Set
Overrides:
hashCode in class Object
Returns:
the hash code value for this set.
See Also:
Object.hashCode(), Object.equals(Object), Set.equals(Object)

removeAll

public boolean removeAll(Collection c)
Removes from this set all of its elements that are contained in the specified collection (optional operation).

This implementation determines which is the smaller of this set and the specified collection, by invoking the size method on each. If this set has fewer elements, then the implementation iterates over this set, checking each element returned by the iterator in turn to see if it is contained in the specified collection. If it is so contained, it is removed from this set with the iterator's remove method. If the specified collection has fewer elements, then the implementation iterates over the specified collection, removing from this set each element returned by the iterator, using this set's remove method.

Note that this implementation will throw an UnsupportedOperationException if the iterator returned by the iterator method does not implement the remove method.

Specified by:
removeAll in interface Set
Overrides:
removeAll in class AbstractCollection
Parameters:
c - elements to be removed from this set.
Returns:
true if this set changed as a result of the call.
Throws:
UnsupportedOperationException - removeAll is not supported by this set.
NullPointerException - if the specified collection is null.
See Also:
AbstractCollection.remove(Object), AbstractCollection.contains(Object)

JavaTM 2 Platform
Std. Ed. v1.4.0

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For further API reference and developer documentation, see Java 2 SDK SE Developer Documentation. That documentation contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions, with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.

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