Difference between HashMap and arraylist

[Dinesh Tahiliani]

Hello ranchers,

Bit confused between differences of HashMap and ArrayList.
I know both are unsynchronized and are much faster than Hastable and Vector.
Can you please expalin me the exact difference between the two.

[Abhijit Das]

HashMap is a collection of key and value pairs similar to Hashtable. But , it supports null and one duplicate key
ArrayList is a collection of objects similar to Vector. It is growable array.

[Dinesh Tahiliani]

Thanks for reply.
But can you expalin in depth on " it supports null and one duplicate key". It would be great you can expalin me iwth example to get clear picture.

[Jesper de Jong]

Maps do not support duplicate keys, so HashMap also does not support duplicate keys. So "it supports one duplicate key" is wrong.

"It supports null" means that you can use null as a key or value. Hashtable does not support null for keys or values (you'll get a NullPointerException if you try to use null as a key or value in a Hashtable).

[ben stone]

I would like to know what are the similarities between ArrayList and HashMap, I was asked in an interview this questions. I mean I read somewhere that both can be used for faster iteration and random access. I would like to know if there are more similarities out there between ArrayList and HashMap.

[Ankit Garg]

ArrayList is ordered while HashMap is not...

[Punit Singh]

Both are not sorted.
Both are not synchronized.
Both are since java 1.2.


HashMap contain (key, Value) pair.
ArrayList is a Collection, HashMap is not a Collection.