Array or List in Java. Which is faster?

Question

I have to keep thousands of strings in memory to be accessed serially in Java. Should I store them in an array or should I use some kind of List ?

Since arrays keep

Answer 1

Arrays - It would always be better when we have to achieve faster fetching of results

Lists- Performs results on insertion and deletion since they can be done in O(1) and this also provides methods to add, fetch and delete data easily. Much easier to use.

But always remember that the fetching of data would be fast when the index position in array where the data is stored - is known.

This could be achieved well by sorting the array. Hence this increases the time to fetch the data (ie; storing the data + sorting the data + seek for the position where the data is found). Hence this increases additional latency to fetch the data from the array even they may be good at fetching the data sooner.

Hence this could be solved with trie data structure or ternary data structure. As discussed above the trie data structure would be very efficient in searching for the data the search for a particularly word can be done in O(1) magnitude. When time matters ie; if you have to search and retrieve data quickly you may go with trie data structure.

If you want your memory space to be consumed less and you wish to have a better performance then go with ternary data structure. Both these are suitable for storing huge number of strings (eg; like words contained in dictionary).