Java: Enumeration from Set<String>

Question

I have a simple collections question. I have a Set<String> object. I want an enumeration of the strings in that set. What is the cleanest/best way to go about it?

Answer 1

EDIT: There's no need to write your own (although I'll leave the implementation below for posterity) - see Kevin Bourrillion's answer for the one in the JDK.

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If you really need an enumeration, could could use:

Enumeration<String> x = new Vector(set).elements();

It would be better to use Iterable<E> if at all possible though...

A better alternative is to write a small wrapper class around Iterator<E>. That way you don't have to take a copy just to find an imlementation of Enumeration<E>:

import java.util.*;

class IteratorEnumeration<E> implements Enumeration<E>
{
    private final Iterator<E> iterator;

    public IteratorEnumeration(Iterator<E> iterator)
    {
        this.iterator = iterator;
    }

    public E nextElement() {
        return iterator.next();
    }

    public boolean hasMoreElements() {
        return iterator.hasNext();
    }

}


public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Set<String> set = new HashSet<String>(); 
        Enumeration<String> x = new IteratorEnumeration<String>(set.iterator());
    }
}

Answer 2

java.util.Collections.enumeration(set)

Javadoc

Returns an enumeration over the specified collection. This provides interoperability with legacy APIs that require an enumeration as input.

Answer 3

Assuming you mean enumeration in the mathematical sense the cleanest way to do this is via a for-loop, applicable to any class that implements Iterable:

Set<String> strs = ...

for (String s : strs) {
 ...
}

If you really require an Enumeration you could implement an adapter class to wrap the Iterator returned by calling iterator(). There is an adapter class in the Apache Collections library: IteratorEnumeration.

Or you could use Google's Guava library:

Set<String> mySet = ...
Enumeration<String> = Iterators.asEnumeration(mySet.iterator());