How to remove all elements from ArrayList in Java - Clear vs RemoveAll

Many times we want to reset an ArrayList for the reusing purpose, by resetting we mean clearing it or removing all elements. There are two ways to reset an ArrayList in Java, by using clear() method or calling removeAll(). If your ArrayList is small enough e.g. contains only 10 or 100 elements then you can use any of these two methods without worrying too much, but, if you have a huge list of lots of objects e.g. an ArrayList containing 10M entries, then choice of clear() vs removeAll() can make a huge difference in performance of your Java application. Sometimes it's even better to create a new ArrayList instead of resetting the old one, especially if resetting takes a long time, but this also has a caveat, you need to make sure that old ArrayList is eligible for garbage collection, otherwise there is a huge risk of java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java Heap Space.

Java 8 forEach() Loop Example

Java 8 has introduced a new way to loop over a List or Collection, by using the forEach() method of the new Stream class. You can iterate over any Collection e.g. List, Set or Map by converting them into a java.util.sttream.Stream instance and then calling forEach() method. This method performs given operation on every element of Stream, which can be either simply printing it or doing something else. Since stream can be sequential or parallel, the behavior of if this method is not deterministic if used with a parallel stream. One more thing to remember about the forEach() method is that it's a terminal operation, which means you cannot reuse the Stream after calling this method. It will throw IllegalStateException if you try to call another method on this Stream.

How to read File into String in Java 7, 8 with Example

Many times you want to read contents of a file into String, but, unfortunately, it was not a trivial job in Java, at least not until JDK 1.7. In Java 8, you can read a file into String in just one line of code. Prior to the release of new File IO API, you have to write a lot of boilerplate code e.g. open an input stream, convert that input stream into a Reader, and then wrap that into a BufferedReader and so on. Of course, JDK 1.5's Scanner class did provide some breathing space but it was still not as simple as it should be, like in Python or Ruby. By using Java 7 new File API and Java 8's new features like lambda expression and stream API, Java is now close to Python or other utility languages, when it comes to reading the file into String.

Eclipse - java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet in Tomcat

Problem : You are getting java.lang.ClassNotFoundException exception complaining that Spring's DispatcherServlet class is not available in the classpath. This error is coming while running a Spring MVC based Java application from Eclipse and Tomcat as Server (running inside Eclipse IDE itself). You have either included spring framework JAR files manually by yourself or you are using Maven to download and manage dependent JAR files. Here is the stack trace of this error :

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
    at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(
    at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(
    at org.apache.catalina.core.DefaultInstanceManager.loadClass(
    at org.apache.catalina.core.DefaultInstanceManager.loadClassMaybePrivileged(
    at org.apache.catalina.core.DefaultInstanceManager.newInstance(
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.loadServlet(
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.load(
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.loadOnStartup(

Difference between Primitive and Reference variable in Java

There are two types of variables in Java, primitive and reference type. All the basic types e.g. int, boolean, char, short, float, long and double are known as primitive types. JVM treats them differently than reference types, which is used to point objects e.g. String, Thread, File and others. Reference variables are not pointers but a handle to the object which is created in heap memory. The main difference between primitive and reference type is that primitive type always has a value, it can never be null but reference type can be null, which denotes the absence of value. So if you create a primitive variable of type int and forget to initialize it then it's value would be 0, the default value of integral type in Java, but a reference variable by default has a null value, which means no reference is assigned to it.

How to convert float to long or int in Java?

Yesterday one of the junior from my team came to me asking about how do you I convert a float variable into long or int? He was storing some values coming from another system in the database and only wanted to store value before the decimal point e.g. he was getting "3.144" and he want to convert it to "3" to store into database. Good thing was that API was returning a float primitive value and you don't need to convert a String to float etc. There are 3 ways to convert a float value into long or int in Java, but we will only focus on long part. You can write the Java program by following tips to convert float to an int by replacing long method to their int counterpart. The first way is to auto-box float primitive into Float object and call the longVale() method and another way is simply cast a float to long or int to get rid of decimal points.

What is @SuppressWarnings annotation in Java? Unchecked, RawTypes, Serial

@SuppressWarnings annotation is one of the three built-in annotations available in JDK and added alongside @Override and @Deprecated in Java 1.5. @SuppressWarnings instruct the compiler to ignore or suppress, specified compiler warning in annotated element and all program elements inside that element. For example, if a class is annotated to suppress a particular warning, then a warning generated in a method inside that class will also be separated. You might have seen @SuppressWarnings("unchecked") and @SuppressWarnings("serial"), two of most popular examples of @SuppressWarnings annotation. Former is used to suppress warning generated due to unchecked casting while the later warning is used to remind about adding SerialVersionUID in a Serializable class.

How to loop over two dimensional array in Java?

You can loop over a two-dimensional array in Java by using two for loops, also known as nested loop. Similarly to loop an n-dimensional array you need n loops nested into each other. Though it's not common to see an array of more than 3 dimension and 2D arrays is what you will see most of the places. It's one of the most useful data structure in the programming world. You can use a two-dimensional array to make finite state machine (FSM) solve state based problems, you can use a 2D array to create board games like Chess, Sudoku and Tic-Tac-To and you can even use a two-dimensional array to create 2D arcade games e.g. Tetris, Super Mario Bros and so on. Whatever you see on your screen is nothing but a 2D array which is populated using tiles.

Difference between Java and C++ Constructor - Interview Question

If you are a C++ Programmer, now learning Java then you will find a lot of similarity between two of the most popular object-oriented programming languages e.g. both support Abstraction, Encapsulation, Class, Object and other OOP concepts. But, they are some subtle differences as well, e.g. both Java and C++  have a constructor and they work the same way in Java as they do in C++, but the way they are called is different. For example, In Java, a constructor must be called by using the new() operator, there is no other way to explicitly call the constructor while creating an object, but in C++ you can do it without new operator. This is a good interview question for programmers who knows both Java and C++.