Array or List in Java. Which is faster?

Question

I have to keep thousands of strings in memory to be accessed serially in Java. Should I store them in an array or should I use some kind of List ?

Since arrays keep

Answer 1

List is the preferred way in java 1.5 and beyond as it can use generics. Arrays cannot have generics. Also Arrays have a pre defined length, which cannot grow dynamically. Initializing an array with a large size is not a good idea. ArrayList is the the way to declare an array with generics and it can dynamically grow. But if delete and insert is used more frequently, then linked list is the fastest data structure to be used.