Why is there no SortedList in Java?

Question

In Java there are the SortedSet and SortedMap interfaces. Both belong to the Java Collections framework and provide a sorted way to access the elements.

However, in

Answer 1

In case you are looking for a way to sort elements, but also be able to access them by index in an efficient way, you can do the following:

1. Use a random access list for storage (e.g. ArrayList)
2. Make sure it is always sorted

Then to add or remove an element you can use Collections.binarySearch to get the insertion / removal index. Since your list implements random access, you can efficiently modify the list with the determined index.

Example:

/**
 * @deprecated
 *      Only for demonstration purposes. Implementation is incomplete and does not 
 *      handle invalid arguments.
 */
@Deprecated
public class SortingList> {
    private ArrayList delegate;

    public SortingList() {
        delegate = new ArrayList<>();
    }

    public void add(E e) {
        int insertionIndex = Collections.binarySearch(delegate, e);

        // < 0 if element is not in the list, see Collections.binarySearch
        if (insertionIndex < 0) {
            insertionIndex = -(insertionIndex + 1);
        }
        else {
            // Insertion index is index of existing element, to add new element 
            // behind it increase index
            insertionIndex++;
        }

        delegate.add(insertionIndex, e);
    }

    public void remove(E e) {
        int index = Collections.binarySearch(delegate, e);
        delegate.remove(index);
    }

    public E get(int index) {
        return delegate.get(index);
    }
}