AI-generated Key Takeaways
-
Enumeration
is an interface in Java that allows you to access elements of a collection one by one, such as elements in a Vector or keys/values in a Hashtable. -
It provides two main methods:
hasMoreElements()
to check if there are more elements andnextElement()
to retrieve the next element. -
While functional,
Enumeration
is considered a legacy interface and new implementations are encouraged to utilize theIterator
interface instead, which offers similar functionality with enhancements like a remove operation and shorter method names. -
Despite being older,
Enumeration
is still used in certain legacy systems and provides a basic framework for iterating over collections of objects.
Known Indirect Subclasses |
An object that implements the Enumeration interface generates a
series of elements, one at a time. Successive calls to the
nextElement
method return successive elements of the
series.
For example, to print all elements of a Vector<E> v:
for (Enumeration<E> e = v.elements(); e.hasMoreElements();) System.out.println(e.nextElement());
Methods are provided to enumerate through the elements of a
vector, the keys of a hashtable, and the values in a hashtable.
Enumerations are also used to specify the input streams to a
SequenceInputStream
.
NOTE: The functionality of this interface is duplicated by the Iterator interface. In addition, Iterator adds an optional remove operation, and has shorter method names. New implementations should consider using Iterator in preference to Enumeration.
Public Method Summary
abstract boolean |
hasMoreElements()
Tests if this enumeration contains more elements.
|
abstract E |
nextElement()
Returns the next element of this enumeration if this enumeration
object has at least one more element to provide.
|
Public Methods
public abstract boolean hasMoreElements ()
Tests if this enumeration contains more elements.
Returns
true
if and only if this enumeration object contains at least one more element to provide;false
otherwise.
public abstract E nextElement ()
Returns the next element of this enumeration if this enumeration object has at least one more element to provide.
Returns
- the next element of this enumeration.
Throws
NoSuchElementException | if no more elements exist. |
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