CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javahashmap
NoobFoo
NoobFoo

Reputation: 1

Implementation of Hashmap

I am not sure if it's been asked. I am fairly new to hashtables and was wondering about something about the inner class.

I was looking at the hashtable API and it had: 

static class Entry<K,V> implements Map.Entry<K,V> { }

my question is: Is it possible to implement the inner class if it was just:

class Entry{ }

Would that be possible?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 80

Answers (1)

Jon Skeet
Jon Skeet

Reputation: 1500505

Well that would be a valid nested class, but it wouldn't implement Map.Entry, so it couldn't be used for the Map methods which require Map.Entry, such as entrySet().

The reason it's declared with the static modifier is that a HashMap.Entry instance doesn't need to know which HashMap it's part of, so there's no benefit in having that extra implicit reference.

Upvotes: 3

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