What's the difference between ConcurrentHashMap and Collections.synchronizedMap(Map)?

Question

I have a Map which is to be modified by several threads concurrently.

There seem to be three different synchronized Map implementations in the Java API:

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Answer 1

You are right about HashTable, you can forget about it.

Your article mentions the fact that while HashTable and the synchronized wrapper class provide basic thread-safety by only allowing one thread at a time to access the map, this is not 'true' thread-safety since many compound operations still require additional synchronization, for example:

synchronized (records) {
  Record rec = records.get(id);
  if (rec == null) {
      rec = new Record(id);
      records.put(id, rec);
  }
  return rec;
}

However, don't think that ConcurrentHashMap is a simple alternative for a HashMap with a typical synchronized block as shown above. Read this article to understand its intricacies better.