What are the benefits of the Iterator interface in Java?

Question

I just learned about how the Java Collections Framework implements data structures in linked lists. From what I understand, Iterators are a way of traversing th

Answer 1

it is important to keep the collection apart from the pointer. the iterator points at a specific place in a collection, and thus is not an integral part of the collection. this way, for an instance, you can use several iterators over the same collection.

the down-side of this seperation is that the iterator is not aware to changes made to the collection it iterates on. so you cannot change the collection's structure and expect the iterator to continue it's work without "complaints".