Hashmap

[navat venu]

Could anyone explain in which scenario hashmap and hashtable will be used?

[Paul Sturrock]

Not an advanced question. Moving...

[Saket Barve]

Navat,

HashTable and HashMap are data structures providing key-value access to data. Following are the basic differences between the two are:
1. HashTable provides default synchronization whereas HashMap does not.
2. Hashtable does not permit null values whereas HashMap does.

Saket

[Jesper de Jong]

Are you asking what HashMap and Hashtable are, or do you already know that and do you want to know when you should use one or the other?

HashMap and Hashtable are both associative array data structures.

Hashtable is a legacy collection class. You shouldn't use it anymore; instead, you should always use HashMap. If you really need a synchronized map, you should use the method java.util.Collections.synchronizedMap(...), for example:

Map<String, Object> map = Collections.synchronizedMap(new HashMap<String, Object>());

[Stan James]

Hashtable should be used in the past, HashMap in the future.

Be darned sure you know what a synchronized map does before you count on it for thread safety. It's very likely you'll want to synchronize all the code that accesses the map instead of using a synchronized map.