IBM Interview Questions: vector implementation

Qu5: Tell in a web based project where we need to implement Vector..

Answer:

java.util
Class Vector

java.lang.Object
  java.util.AbstractCollection
      java.util.AbstractList
          java.util.Vector

All Implemented Interfaces:

Cloneable, Collection, List, RandomAccess, Serializable

Direct Known Subclasses:

Stack

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public class Vector

extends AbstractList

implements List, RandomAccess, Cloneable, Serializable

The Vector class implements a growable array of objects. Like an array, it contains components that can be accessed using an integer index. However, the size of a Vector can grow or shrink as needed to accommodate adding and removing items after the Vector has been created.
Each vector tries to optimize storage management by maintaining a capacity and a capacityIncrement. The capacity is always at least as large as the vector size; it is usually larger because as components are added to the vector, the vector's storage increases in chunks the size of capacityIncrement. An application can increase the capacity of a vector before inserting a large number of components; this reduces the amount of incremental reallocation.

As of the Java 2 platform v1.2, this class has been retrofitted to implement List, so that it becomes a part of Java's collection framework. Unlike the new collection implementations, Vector is synchronized.
The Iterators returned by Vector's iterator and listIterator methods are fail-fast: if the Vector is structurally modified at any time after the Iterator is created, in any way except through the Iterator's own remove or add methods, the Iterator will throw a ConcurrentModificationException.

Thus, in the face of concurrent modification, the Iterator fails quickly and cleanly, rather than risking arbitrary, non-deterministic behavior at an undetermined time in the future. The Enumerations returned by Vector's elements method are not fail-fast.

Note that the fail-fast behavior of an iterator cannot be guaranteed as it is, generally speaking, impossible to make any hard guarantees in the presence of unsynchronized concurrent modification. Fail-fast iterators throw ConcurrentModificationException on a best-effort basis.

Therefore, it would be wrong to write a program that depended on this exception for its correctness: the fail-fast behavior of iterators should be used only to detect bugs.

This class is a member of the Java Collections Framework.

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