How do I join two lists in Java?

Question

Conditions: do not modifiy the original lists; JDK only, no external libraries. Bonus points for a one-liner or a JDK 1.3 version.

Is there a simpler way than:

List<String> newList = new ArrayList<String>();
newList.addAll(listOne);
newList.addAll(listTwo);

Answer 1

public static <T> List<T> merge(@Nonnull final List<T>... list) {
    // calculate length first
    int mergedLength = 0;
    for (List<T> ts : list) {
      mergedLength += ts.size();
    }

    final List<T> mergedList = new ArrayList<>(mergedLength);

    for (List<T> ts : list) {
      mergedList.addAll(ts);
    }

    return mergedList;
  }

Answer 2

public class TestApp {

/**
 * @param args
 */
public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println("Hi");
    Set<List<String>> bcOwnersList = new HashSet<List<String>>();
    List<String> bclist = new ArrayList<String>();
    List<String> bclist1 = new ArrayList<String>();
    List<String> object = new ArrayList<String>();
    object.add("BC11");
    object.add("C2");
    bclist.add("BC1");
    bclist.add("BC2");
    bclist.add("BC3");
    bclist.add("BC4");
    bclist.add("BC5");
    bcOwnersList.add(bclist);
    bcOwnersList.add(object);

    bclist1.add("BC11");
    bclist1.add("BC21");
    bclist1.add("BC31");
    bclist1.add("BC4");
    bclist1.add("BC5");

    List<String> listList= new ArrayList<String>();
    for(List<String> ll : bcOwnersList){
        listList = (List<String>) CollectionUtils.union(listList,CollectionUtils.intersection(ll, bclist1));
    }
    /*for(List<String> lists : listList){
        test = (List<String>) CollectionUtils.union(test, listList);
    }*/
    for(Object l : listList){
        System.out.println(l.toString());
    }
    System.out.println(bclist.contains("BC"));

}

}

Answer 3

The proposed solution is for three lists though it can be applied for two lists as well. In Java 8 we can make use of Stream.of or Stream.concat as:

List<String> result1 = Stream.concat(Stream.concat(list1.stream(),list2.stream()),list3.stream()).collect(Collectors.toList());
List<String> result2 = Stream.of(list1,list2,list3).flatMap(Collection::stream).collect(Collectors.toList());

Stream.concat takes two streams as input and creates a lazily concatenated stream whose elements are all the elements of the first stream followed by all the elements of the second stream. As we have three lists we have used this method (Stream.concat) two times.

We can also write a utility class with a method that takes any number of lists (using varargs) and returns a concatenated list as:

public static <T> List<T> concatenatedList(List<T>... collections) {
        return Arrays.stream(collections).flatMap(Collection::stream).collect(Collectors.toList()); 
}

Then we can make use of this method as:

List<String> result3 = StringUtils.concatenatedList(list1,list2,list3);

Answer 4

In kotlin:

val result = listOne.plus(listTwo)

Or simpler:

val result = listOne + listTwo

Answer 5

Not simpler, but without resizing overhead:

List<String> newList = new ArrayList<>(listOne.size() + listTwo.size());
newList.addAll(listOne);
newList.addAll(listTwo);

Answer 6

another one liner solution using Java8 stream, since flatMap solution is already posted, here is a solution without flatMap

List<E> li = lol.stream().collect(ArrayList::new, List::addAll, List::addAll);

or

List<E> ints = Stream.of(list1, list2).collect(ArrayList::new, List::addAll, List::addAll);

code

    List<List<Integer>> lol = Arrays.asList(Arrays.asList(1, 2, 3), Arrays.asList(4, 5, 6));
    List<Integer> li = lol.stream().collect(ArrayList::new, List::addAll, List::addAll);
    System.out.println(lol);
    System.out.println(li);

output

[[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]]
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]