List Interface in JAVA

This is an ordered collection (also known as a sequence). The List interface extends the Collection interface to define an ordered collection, permitting duplicates and declares the behavior of a collection that stores a sequence of elements. In addition to the operations inherited from Collection, the List interface includes it's own operations specified in below table.

The List interface is as follows:

public interface List<E> extends Collection<E> {

    // Positional access

    E get(int index);

    // optional

    E set(int index, E element);

    // optional

    boolean add(E element); 

    // optional

    void add(int index, E element);

    // optional

    E remove(int index);

    // optional

    boolean addAll(int index, Collection<? extends E> c);

    // Search

    int indexOf(Object o);

    int lastIndexOf(Object o);

    // Iteration

    ListIterator<E> listIterator();

    ListIterator<E> listIterator(int index);

    // Range-view

    List<E> subList(int from, int to);

}
Following table specifies the methods of List interface:

Characteristics of list interface:

• The List interface provides a special iterator, called a ListIterator, that allows element insertion and replacement, and bidirectional access in addition to the normal operations that the Iterator interface provides. A method is provided to obtain a list iterator that starts at a specified position in the list.
• Elements can be inserted or accessed by their position in the list, using a zero-based index.
• Lists allow duplicate elements and they typically allow multiple null elements if they allow null elements at all.
• Methods of list will throw an UnsupportedOperationException if the collection cannot be modified, and a ClassCastException is generated when one object is incompatible with another.
• The List interface provides two methods to search for a specified object. From a performance standpoint, these methods should be used with caution. In many implementations they will perform costly linear searches.
• The List interface provides two methods to efficiently insert and remove multiple elements at an arbitrary point in the list.
  
  Example:
  
  package com.sample.javase.testing;
  
  import java.util.ArrayList;
  import java.util.Iterator;
  import java.util.List;
  
  public class ListInterfaceExample {
  
  /**
  * @param args
  */
  public static void main(String[] args) {
  
  List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
  list.add("servlets");
  list.add("jsp");
  list.add("jdbc");
  // We can print list as below or we can iterate it using iterator.
  System.out.println(list);
  // We can access elements of listr using iterator
  for (Iterator<String> iterator2 = list.iterator(); iterator2.hasNext();) {
  String string = (String) iterator2.next();
  System.out.println(string);
  }
  }
  
  
  }