CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2011/ch1 1b tj

Collections Framework

---

Introduction

In this wiki, we are going to talk about collections frameworks : their history, the advantages of standard collections frameworks (like Java), compared to that of C++, the advantages of collections built into languages like Ruby compared to those having collections as class libraries. We will illustrate the advantages and compare the differences with some examples.

What is a collections framework?

A collection is a group of objects, and is essentially a container that groups multiple elements into a single unit. Since a collection is just a group of objects, some examples of a collection are : a stack of books, a dictionary, a list of names, a telephone directory. A collections framework is a system to represent and manipulate these collections.

Need for a collections framework

The need for a collections framework is to address the need for reusable collection data structures. This led to the development of many collections frameworks.

History

As mentioned before, to address the need for reusable collection data structures, several independent frameworks were developed. Doug Lea's collections package (released in 1995) was the first widely used collection. In 1996, a company called Object Space developed and released the Java Generic Library ,JGL, with the main goal of being consistent with C++ Standard Template Library.