Performance and Memory allocation comparison between List and Set

Question

I want to know the comparison between List and Set in terms of performance,memory allocation and usability.

If i don\'t have any requirement of keeping the uniquenes

Answer 1

If you will compare, searching between List and Set, Set will be better because of the underline Hashing algorithm.

In the case of a list, in worst case scenario, contains will search till the end. In case of Set, because of hashing and bucket, it will search only subset.

Sample use case: Add 1 to 100_000 integer to ArrayList and HashSet. Search each integer in ArrayList and HashSet.

Set will take 9 milliseconds where as List will take 16232 seconds.

private static void compareSetvsList(){
    List list = new ArrayList<>() ;
    Set set = new HashSet<>() ;

    System.out.println("Setting values in list and set .... ");
    int counter = 100_000  ;

    for(int i =0 ; i< counter ; i++){            
        list.add(i);
        set.add(i);
    }

    System.out.println("Checking time .... ");
    long l1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
    for(int i =0 ; i< counter ; i++) list.contains(i);

    long l2 = System.currentTimeMillis();
    System.out.println(" time taken for list : "+ (l2-l1));

    for(int i =0 ; i< counter ; i++)set.contains(i);

    long l3 = System.currentTimeMillis();
    System.out.println(" time taken for set : "+ (l3-l2));

    //      for 10000   time taken for list : 123        time taken for set : 4
    //      for 100000  time taken for list : 16232          time taken for set : 9
    //      for 1000000 time taken for list : hung       time taken for set : 26

}