Here is an inheritence graph of some of the more important Java collection classes of Java 1.5. Instantiateable classes are blue and rectangular, abstract classes are just rectangular, and interfaces are elliptic. Click on the image for a printable size:
Java 1.5 Collections Hierarchy
As a sidenote, have written this post almost a year ago and just found it in my drafts. I have completely forgotten about it! So here it is anyways. And now I remember why I did not post it: becauseit contains only a minor subset of the collections! Thanks Artur Biesiadowski for reminding me about that…
You should probably note that this is only subset of collection classes. I can spot ConcurrentHashMap and BlockingArrayQueue missing (from ones I’m using very often) – but probably loads of others are also missing (especially around queue area).
I think this graph shows classes hierarchy from Java SE 6. Some shown here are not present in Java SE 1.5. NavigableSet, NavigableMap, ConcurrentSkipListSet, ConcurrentSkipListMap, LinkedBlockingDeque to name a few…
Aren’t some of the links to interfaces redundant? For instance, ArrayList is pointing to the List interface, already implemented by the AbstractList. Similar thing with HashSet, HashMap and WeakHashMap.
Great sketch either way. Thanks, E