Is ArrayList.size() method cached?

Question

I was wondering, is the size() method that you can call on a existing ArrayList cached? Or is it preferable in performance critical code t

Answer 1

I don't think I'd say it's "cached" as such - but it's just stored in a field, so it's fast enough to call frequently.

The Sun JDK implementation of size() is just:

public int size() {
    return size;
}