In a programming language (e.g. Java), what\'s the difference between container
and wrapper
(or is there a difference). I\'ve heard both the terms used
In programming languages the word container is generally used for structures that can contain more than one element, for example a Map, a Set or a List. These structures normally provide methods like contains
, that are semantically suitable if the object can contain more than one item.
A wrapper instead is something that wraps around a single object to provide more functionalities and interfaces to it. The typical example is the Integer
class that in Java wraps the base type int
.