CopyOnWriteArrayList in Java

The CopyOnWriteArrayList is the thread-safe implementation of the List interface. CopyOnWriteArrayList is very useful when we want to iterate over a list in a thread-safe way without explicit synchronization.

Key Properties of CopyOnWriteArrayList

While it provides thread safety, it is comparatively slower as compared to ArrayList especially when you're making a lot of modifications to the list.

Let us look into the following example:

public class _4a_ConcurrentModificationException {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();
        list.add("Apple");
        list.add("Banana");
        list.add("Guava");
        list.add("Grapes");

        for (String value: list) {
            if (value.equals("Banana")) {
                list.remove("Grapes");  // ConcurrentModificationException
            }
        }
        System.out.println(list);
    }
}

Notice that in the above program, we are modifying the list while iterating hence the application will throw ConcurrentModificationException.

Exception in thread "main" java.util.ConcurrentModificationException
    at java.base/java.util.ArrayList$Itr.checkForComodification(ArrayList.java:1013)
    at java.base/java.util.ArrayList$Itr.next(ArrayList.java:967)
    at list.arraylist._4a_ConcurrentModificationException.main(_4a_ConcurrentModificationException.java:15)

To avoid this exception, we can either call the remove() method on an iterator or use CopyOnWriteArrayList.

The CopyOnWriteArrayList class makes a fresh copy of the underlying array while performing mutative operations (such as add, set, and remove).

public class _4b_CopyOnWriteArrayList {

    public static void main(String[] args) {  
        List<String> list = new CopyOnWriteArrayList<>();
        list.add("Apple");
        list.add("Banana");
        list.add("Guava"); 
        list.add("Grapes");

        for (String value : list) {  
            if (value.equals("Banana")) {
                list.remove("Grapes");
            }
        }
        System.out.println(list);  
    }  
}