Difference between Vector and Arraylist

[Lil_Aziz1]

I know how an Arraylist works but I see a Vector being used more often. What's the difference between them two? On java.sun.com, it said that Arraylist is unsynchronized and Vector is synchronized. Synchronize means to do at same time; thus, making no sense.

Any help is appreciated. ;)

[adz]

Look up synchronization - the documentation isn't wrong... think of Threads.

[Eranga]

Synchronize means to do at same time; thus, making no sense.

No it make sense a lot.

Vectors are synchronized, means any method that deals vector's contents is thread safe. But ArrayList is not synchronized, not thread safe then. With that difference, synchronization will introduce a performance hit into your application/code. So if you don't need a thread-safe collection, use the ArrayList. Dealing with thread essential in most of the industrial level application.

[pbrockway2]

When they say Vector is synchronized they mean that is safe to use when there are multiple threads (as others have said) not that the class itself uses multiple threads. It's easy to how your confusion might arise.

If you want a synchronized list use wrapper around some other implementation like an ArrayList or LinkedList. Vector is very 20th century.

[Lil_Aziz1]

Well, i know nothing about Threads yet. Going to read java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/concurrency/ and hopefully synchronization in java makes sense.
Btw, I love your profile pic Eranga. :)

[Eranga]

Well, i know nothing about Threads yet.

Then it's better to study more about Threads first of all my friend.

Btw, I love your profile pic Eranga. :)

If you loved my comments, it's really nice lol. I just want to let what I know. ;)

[raqman]

Vector and ArrayList are very similar. Both of them represent a 'growable array', where you access to the elements in it through an index.

ArrayList it's part of the Java Collection Framework, and has been added with version 1.2, while Vector it's an object that is present since the first version of the JDK. Vector, anyway, has been retrofitted to implement the List interface.

The main difference is that Vector it's a synchronized object, while ArrayList it's not.

While the iterator that are returned by both classes are fail-fast (they cleanly thrown a ConcurrentModificationException when the orignal object has been modified), the Enumeration returned by Vector are not.

Unless you have strong reason to use a Vector, the suggestion is to use the ArrayList.

[OutOfMemory]

As everybody has already explained ..ArrayList is a new unsynchronized form of an earlier indexed and ordered data structure Vector, which is there in jdk since inception (although later changed to incorporate list interface)...

So vector should not be used in a single threaded environment.As sun has already said vectors are slower than arraylist.

Even in threaded environment instead of using vector ,one can get a synchronized list by calling Collections.synchronizedList(list) which returns a thread safe version of list.

I am not sure but somewhere I have read that Collections.synchronizedList(list) method was buggy in jdk1.4 .. can anybody tell what it is ?

[Eranga]

Did you read the Java API about this?

[AnanthFrancis]

great.......
i was puzzled in this topic,
U helped me a lot.

Thanks ma

[JosAH]

I'm closing this thread before more insane replies are posted here ...

Jos