posted 14 years ago
Slightly confusing link, but it does give the general direction.
People often use "sorted" and "ordered" rather loosely, but that link does tell you that it is possible to go through an ordered collection and retrieve the first-entered value first, then the second, etc. That link is confused about LinkedList and ArrayList, saying that you add to the end of a LinkedList and to the index in an ArrayList. It is usual to add to the end of an ArrayList, and it is possible to add to an index in a LinkedList. By inserting elements in the middle of a List, you are altering the order.
It is correct about "sorted"; you can get elements out in a sequence determined by their "values". You can alter the sequence of "values" by changing Comparators or a compareTo method or similarly.
You can also sometimes get Collections ordered backwards (eg a Stack) or iterate through collections backwards.
