What is CopyOnWriteArrayList in Java - Example Tutorial

CopyOnWriteArrayList vs ArrayList in Java

CopyOnWriteArrayList is a concurrent Collection class introduced in Java 5 Concurrency API along with its popular cousin ConcurrentHashMap in Java. CopyOnWriteArrayList implements List interface like ArrayList, Vector, and LinkedList but its a thread-safe collection and it achieves its thread-safety in a slightly different way than Vector or other thread-safe collection class. As the name suggests CopyOnWriteArrayList creates a copy of underlying ArrayList with every mutation operation e.g. add, remove, or when you set values. That's why it is only suitable for a small list of values which are read frequently but modified rarely e.g. a list of configurations.

Normally CopyOnWriteArrayList is very expensive because it involves costly Array copy with every writes operation but it's very efficient if you have a List where Iteration outnumbers mutation e.g. you mostly need to iterate the ArrayList and don't modify it too often.

Iterator of CopyOnWriteArrayList is fail-safe and doesn't throw ConcurrentModificationException even if underlying CopyOnWriteArrayList is modified once Iteration begins because Iterator is operating on a separate copy of ArrayList. Consequently, all the updates made on CopyOnWriteArrayList is not available to Iterator (see Java Fundamentals: Collections).

In this Java Collection tutorial we will see What is CopyOnWriteArrayList in Java, Difference between ArrayList and CopyOnWriteArrayList in Java and One simple Java program example on How to use CopyOnWriteArrayList in Java.

Difference between CopyOnWriteArrayList and ArrayList in Java.

In the last section, we have seen What is CopyOnWriteArrayList in Java and How it achieves thread-safety by creating a separate copy of List for each writes operation.

Now let's see Some difference between ArrayList and CopyOnWriteArrayList in Java, which is another implementation of List interface :

1) First and foremost difference between CopyOnWriteArrayList and ArrayList in Java is that CopyOnWriteArrayList is a thread-safe collection while ArrayList is not thread-safe and can not be used in the multi-threaded environment.

2) The second difference between ArrayList and CopyOnWriteArrayList is that Iterator of ArrayList is fail-fast and throw ConcurrentModificationException once detect any modification in List once iteration begins but Iterator of CopyOnWriteArrayList is fail-safe and doesn't throw ConcurrentModificationException.

3) The third difference between CopyOnWriteArrayList vs ArrayList is that Iterator of former doesn't support remove operation while Iterator of later supports remove() operation.  If you want to learn more about collections, I suggest you go through Complete Java MasterClass, one of the best Java course on Udemy.

CopyOnWriteArrayList Example in Java

Here is a complete code Example of CopyOnWriteArrayList which demonstrate that Iterator of CopyOnWriteArrayList doesn't support remove() operation.

import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.concurrent.CopyOnWriteArrayList;

/**
 *
 * Java program to demonstrate What is CopyOnWriteArrayList in Java,

 * Iterator of CopyOnWriteArrayList
 * doesn’t support add, remove or any modification operation.
 *
 * @author Java67
 */
public class CopyOnWriteArrayListExample{

    public static void main(String args[]) {
     
        CopyOnWriteArrayList<String> threadSafeList = new CopyOnWriteArrayList<String>();
        threadSafeList.add("Java");
        threadSafeList.add("J2EE");
        threadSafeList.add("Collection");
     
        //add, remove operator is not supported by CopyOnWriteArrayList iterator
        Iterator<String> failSafeIterator = threadSafeList.iterator();
        while(failSafeIterator.hasNext()){
            System.out.printf("Read from CopyOnWriteArrayList : %s %n", failSafeIterator.next());
            failSafeIterator.remove(); //not supported in CopyOnWriteArrayList in Java
        }
    }
}

Output:
Read from CopyOnWriteArrayList : Java
Read from CopyOnWriteArrayList : J2EE
Read from CopyOnWriteArrayList : Collection

If we uncomment, commented code in this Java program which modifies CopyOnWriteArrayList using Iterator then we will get following Exception :

Read from CopyOnWriteArrayList : Java

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException

        at java.util.concurrent.CopyOnWriteArrayList$COWIterator.remove(CopyOnWriteArrayList.java:1004)

        at test.CollectionTest.main(CollectionTest.java:29)

Java Result: 1

Here is a summary of CopyOnWriteArrayList in a slide, it teaches you what all the words have taught you so far:

That's all about what is CopyOnWriteArrayList, the difference between CopyOnWriteArrayList and ArrayList in Java, and an example of CopyOnWriteArrayList. In short, use CopyOnWriteArrayList if you mostly require to Iterate over the list without modifying it.



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