How do I join two lists in Java?

Question

Conditions: do not modifiy the original lists; JDK only, no external libraries. Bonus points for a one-liner or a JDK 1.3 version.

Is there a simpler way than:

Answer 1

This is simple and just one line, but will add the contents of listTwo to listOne. Do you really need to put the contents in a third list?

Collections.addAll(listOne, listTwo.toArray());

Answer 2

You could do it with a static import and a helper class

nb the generification of this class could probably be improved

public class Lists {

   private Lists() { } // can't be instantiated

   public static List<T> join(List<T>... lists) {
      List<T> result = new ArrayList<T>();
      for(List<T> list : lists) {
         result.addAll(list);
      }
      return results;
   }

}

Then you can do things like

import static Lists.join;
List<T> result = join(list1, list2, list3, list4);

Answer 3

Use a Helper class.

I suggest:

public static <E> Collection<E> addAll(Collection<E> dest, Collection<? extends E>... src) {
    for(Collection<? extends E> c : src) {
        dest.addAll(c);
    }

    return dest;
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println(addAll(new ArrayList<Object>(), Arrays.asList(1,2,3), Arrays.asList("a", "b", "c")));

    // does not compile
    // System.out.println(addAll(new ArrayList<Integer>(), Arrays.asList(1,2,3), Arrays.asList("a", "b", "c")));

    System.out.println(addAll(new ArrayList<Integer>(), Arrays.asList(1,2,3), Arrays.asList(4, 5, 6)));
}

Answer 4

No way near one-liner, but I think this is the simplest:

List<String> newList = new ArrayList<String>(l1);
newList.addAll(l2);

for(String w:newList)
        System.out.printf("%s ", w);

Answer 5

You could use the Apache commons-collections library:

List<String> newList = ListUtils.union(list1, list2);

Answer 6

Here's an approach using streams and java 8 if your lists have different types and you want to combine them to a list of another type.

public static void main(String[] args) {
    List<String> list2 = new ArrayList<>();
    List<Pair<Integer, String>> list1 = new ArrayList<>();

    list2.add("asd");
    list2.add("asdaf");
    list1.add(new Pair<>(1, "werwe"));
    list1.add(new Pair<>(2, "tyutyu"));

    Stream stream = Stream.concat(list1.stream(), list2.stream());

    List<Pair<Integer, String>> res = (List<Pair<Integer, String>>) stream
            .map(item -> {
                if (item instanceof String) {
                    return new Pair<>(0, item);
                }
                else {
                    return new Pair<>(((Pair<Integer, String>)item).getKey(), ((Pair<Integer, String>)item).getValue());
                }
            })
            .collect(Collectors.toList());
}