Why HashTable does not allow null values..?

Dear all

As we know that Hashtable does not allow null values as keys and values,Kindly tell me why they made the implementation like that other than Hashmap which allows null

[Jesper Young: edited topic title, "numm" -> "null"]

"numm value"? Please take the time to proof-read your posts.

Of what utility would they be? Null values would be indistinguishable from missing values except during iteration, and of what use would a null key be?

Sorry for the misplacing of numm instead of null

Bear Bibeault wrote:Null values would be indistinguishable from missing values except during iteration

That's where containsKey comes in.

and of what use would a null key be?

It allows you to store the key without a value. Granted, I never saw the need for that, but still.

I want the reason behind that why they made to allow null values in hashmap i had gone through the API that while putting they are going to check the null values.

I think the more important question is: why would you NOT want to allow null keys and values? Using null values for defaults (if there is no value for a non-null key, check the value for the null key) isn't uncommon. If you want to disallow them, use Collections.checkedMap - that one forbids null as well.

Agree with Rob; there are instances where you want to permit nulls and instances when you want to prohibit them.