What are the differences between ArrayList and Vec

Question

What are the differences between the two data structures ArrayList and Vector, and where should you use each of them?

Answer 1

Vector is a broken class that is not threadsafe, despite it being "synchronized" and is only used by students and other inexperienced programmers.

ArrayList is the go-to List implementation used by professionals and experienced programmers.

Professionals wanting a threadsafe List implementation use a CopyOnWriteArrayList.

Answer 2

There are 2 major differentiation's between Vector and ArrayList.

1. Vector is synchronized by default, and ArrayList is not. Note : you can make ArrayList also synchronized by passing arraylist object to Collections.synchronizedList() method. Synchronized means : it can be used with multiple threads with out any side effect.

2. ArrayLists grow by 50% of the previous size when space is not sufficient for new element, where as Vector will grow by 100% of the previous size when there is no space for new incoming element.

Other than this, there are some practical differences between them, in terms of programming effort:

1. To get the element at a particular location from Vector we use elementAt(int index) function. This function name is very lengthy. In place of this in ArrayList we have get(int index) which is very easy to remember and to use.
2. Similarly to replace an existing element with a new element in Vector we use setElementAt() method, which is again very lengthy and may irritate the programmer to use repeatedly. In place of this ArrayList has add(int index, object) method which is easy to use and remember. Like this they have more programmer friendly and easy to use function names in ArrayList.

When to use which one?

1. Try to avoid using Vectors completely. ArrayLists can do everything what a Vector can do. More over ArrayLists are by default not synchronized. If you want, you can synchronize it when ever you need by using Collections util class.
2. ArrayList has easy to remember and use function names.

Note : even though arraylist grows by 100%, you can avoid this by ensurecapacity() method to make sure that you are allocating sufficient memory at the initial stages itself.

Hope it helps.