What is Java Collections API

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Java Collections framework API is a unified architecture for representing and manipulating collections. The API contains Interfaces, Implementations & Algorithm to help java programmer in everyday programming. In nutshell, this API does 6 things at high level

  • Reduces programming efforts. – Increases program speed and quality.
  • Allows interoperability among unrelated APIs.
  • Reduces effort to learn and to use new APIs.
  • Reduces effort to design new APIs.
  • Encourages & Fosters software reuse.

To be specific, There are six collection java interfaces. The most basic interface is Collection. Three interfaces extend Collection: Set, List, and SortedSet. The other two collection interfaces, Map and SortedMap, do not extend Collection, as they represent mappings rather than true collections.