Name
Hashtable
Synopsis
Hashtable is a collection class in which objects (referred
to as values) are stored with associated keys. An entry
is added to the Hashtable using the put()
method, which takes a key and a value. Both the key and the value can be
arbitrary Java objects, but neither may be null. Only one
instance of each key may appear in the Hashtable; an
attempt to store a second value with the same key will replace the first value.
Key equality is determined by using the equals() method.
The value associated with a key can be obtained by passing the key to the
get() method. If there is no value in the
Hashtable with the supplied key, then
null is returned. The contains()
method can be used to determine whether an entry with a given key exists.
The containsKey() method returns true
if at least one entry with the supplied value is found
in the table. Since only keys are required to be unique, it is possible for
the same value (or values that are equal according to their
equals() methods) to appear in the table more than once.
The size() method returns the number of entries in the
Hashtable. However, to determine whether the
Hashtable is empty, it is often more convienent to use the
isEmpty() method.
To remove an entry from the Hashtable, pass its key to the
remove() method. If an entry with the given key was found in
the table, the remove() method returns its value,
implementing a read-and-clear operation. All of the entries in the
Hashtable can be deleted by calling the ...
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