How to convert a Collection to List?

Question

I am using TreeBidiMap from the Apache Collections library. I want to sort this on the values which are doubles.

My method is to retrieve a

Answer 1

What you request is quite a costy operation, make sure you don't need to do it often (e.g in a cycle).

If you need it to stay sorted and you update it frequently, you can create a custom collection. For example, I came up with one that has your TreeBidiMap and TreeMultiset under the hood. Implement only what you need and care about data integrity.

class MyCustomCollection implements Map {
    TreeBidiMap map;
    TreeMultiset multiset;
    public V put(K key, V value) {
        removeValue(map.put(key, value));
        multiset.add(value);
    }
    public boolean remove(K key) {
        removeValue(map.remove(key));
    }
    /** removes value that was removed/replaced in map */
    private removeValue(V value) {
        if (value != null) {
            multiset.remove(value);
        }
    }
    public Set keySet() {
        return Collections.unmodifiableSet(map.keySet());
    }
    public Collection values() {
        return Collections.unmodifiableCollection(multiset);
    }
    // many more methods to be implemented, e.g. count, isEmpty etc.
    // but these are fairly simple
}

This way, you have a sorted Multiset returned from values(). However, if you need it to be a list (e.g. you need the array-like get(index) method), you'd need something more complex.

For brevity, I only return unmodifiable collections. What @Lino mentioned is correct, and modifying the keySet or values collection as it is would make it inconsistent. I don't know any consistent way to make the values mutable, but the keySet could support remove if it uses the remove method from the MyCustomCollection class above.