Java™ How to Program, Seventh Edition

19.7. Stack Class of Package java.util

In Chapter 17, Data Structures, we learned how to build fundamental data structures, including linked lists, stacks, queues and trees. In a world of software reuse, rather than building data structures as we need them, we can often take advantage of existing data structures. In this section, we investigate class Stack in the Java utilities package (java.util).

Section 19.5.3 discussed class Vector, which implements a dynamically resizable array. Class Stack extends class Vector to implement a stack data structure. Autoboxing occurs when you add a primitive type to a Stack, because class Stack stores only references to objects. Figure 19.16 demonstrates several Stack methods. For the details of class Stack ...