Why does Java's ArrayList's remove function seem to cost so little?
I ran a benchmark, trying each of the following strategies for filtering the list elements:
- Copy the wanted elements into a new list
UseIterator.remove()to remove the unwanted elements from anArrayList- Use
Iterator.remove()to remove the unwanted elements from aLinkedList - Compact the list in-place (moving the wanted elements to lower positions)
- Remove by index (
List.remove(int)) on anArrayList - Remove by index (
List.remove(int)) on aLinkedList
Each time I populated the list with 100000 random instances of Point and used a filter condition (based on the hash code) that would accept 95% of elements and reject the remaining 5% (the same proportion stated in the question, but with a smaller list because I didn't have time to run the test for 250000 elements.)
And the average times (on my old MacBook Pro: Core 2 Duo, 2.2GHz, 3Gb RAM) were:
CopyIntoNewListWithIterator : 4.24ms
CopyIntoNewListWithoutIterator: 3.57ms
FilterLinkedListInPlace : 4.21ms
RandomRemoveByIndex : 312.50ms
SequentialRemoveByIndex : 33632.28ms
ShiftDown : 3.75ms
So removing elements by index from a LinkedList was more than 300 times more expensive than removing them from an ArrayList, and probably somewhere between 6000-10000 times more expensive than the other methods (that avoid linear search and arraycopy)
Here there doesn't seem to be much difference between the four faster methods, but I ran just those four again with a 500000-element list with the following results:
CopyIntoNewListWithIterator : 92.49ms
CopyIntoNewListWithoutIterator: 71.77ms
FilterLinkedListInPlace : 15.73ms
ShiftDown : 11.86ms
I'm guessing that with the larger size cache memory becomes the limiting factor, so the cost of creating a second copy of the list becomes significant.
Here's the code:
import java.awt.Point;
import java.security.SecureRandom;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Random;
import java.util.TreeMap;
public class ListBenchmark {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Random rnd = new SecureRandom();
Map<String, Long> timings = new TreeMap<String, Long>();
for (int outerPass = 0; outerPass < 10; ++ outerPass) {
List<FilterStrategy> strategies =
Arrays.asList(new CopyIntoNewListWithIterator(),
new CopyIntoNewListWithoutIterator(),
new FilterLinkedListInPlace(),
new RandomRemoveByIndex(),
new SequentialRemoveByIndex(),
new ShiftDown());
for (FilterStrategy strategy: strategies) {
String strategyName = strategy.getClass().getSimpleName();
for (int innerPass = 0; innerPass < 10; ++ innerPass) {
strategy.populate(rnd);
if (outerPass >= 5 && innerPass >= 5) {
Long totalTime = timings.get(strategyName);
if (totalTime == null) totalTime = 0L;
timings.put(strategyName, totalTime - System.currentTimeMillis());
}
Collection<Point> filtered = strategy.filter();
if (outerPass >= 5 && innerPass >= 5) {
Long totalTime = timings.get(strategyName);
timings.put(strategy.getClass().getSimpleName(), totalTime + System.currentTimeMillis());
}
CHECKSUM += filtered.hashCode();
System.err.printf("%-30s %d %d %d%n", strategy.getClass().getSimpleName(), outerPass, innerPass, filtered.size());
strategy.clear();
}
}
}
for (Map.Entry<String, Long> e: timings.entrySet()) {
System.err.printf("%-30s: %9.2fms%n", e.getKey(), e.getValue() * (1.0/25.0));
}
}
public static volatile int CHECKSUM = 0;
static void populate(Collection<Point> dst, Random rnd) {
for (int i = 0; i < INITIAL_SIZE; ++ i) {
dst.add(new Point(rnd.nextInt(), rnd.nextInt()));
}
}
static boolean wanted(Point p) {
return p.hashCode() % 20 != 0;
}
static abstract class FilterStrategy {
abstract void clear();
abstract Collection<Point> filter();
abstract void populate(Random rnd);
}
static final int INITIAL_SIZE = 100000;
private static class CopyIntoNewListWithIterator extends FilterStrategy {
public CopyIntoNewListWithIterator() {
list = new ArrayList<Point>(INITIAL_SIZE);
}
@Override
void clear() {
list.clear();
}
@Override
Collection<Point> filter() {
ArrayList<Point> dst = new ArrayList<Point>(list.size());
for (Point p: list) {
if (wanted(p)) dst.add(p);
}
return dst;
}
@Override
void populate(Random rnd) {
ListBenchmark.populate(list, rnd);
}
private final ArrayList<Point> list;
}
private static class CopyIntoNewListWithoutIterator extends FilterStrategy {
public CopyIntoNewListWithoutIterator() {
list = new ArrayList<Point>(INITIAL_SIZE);
}
@Override
void clear() {
list.clear();
}
@Override
Collection<Point> filter() {
int inputSize = list.size();
ArrayList<Point> dst = new ArrayList<Point>(inputSize);
for (int i = 0; i < inputSize; ++ i) {
Point p = list.get(i);
if (wanted(p)) dst.add(p);
}
return dst;
}
@Override
void populate(Random rnd) {
ListBenchmark.populate(list, rnd);
}
private final ArrayList<Point> list;
}
private static class FilterLinkedListInPlace extends FilterStrategy {
public String toString() {
return getClass().getSimpleName();
}
FilterLinkedListInPlace() {
list = new LinkedList<Point>();
}
@Override
void clear() {
list.clear();
}
@Override
Collection<Point> filter() {
for (Iterator<Point> it = list.iterator();
it.hasNext();
) {
Point p = it.next();
if (! wanted(p)) it.remove();
}
return list;
}
@Override
void populate(Random rnd) {
ListBenchmark.populate(list, rnd);
}
private final LinkedList<Point> list;
}
private static class RandomRemoveByIndex extends FilterStrategy {
public RandomRemoveByIndex() {
list = new ArrayList<Point>(INITIAL_SIZE);
}
@Override
void clear() {
list.clear();
}
@Override
Collection<Point> filter() {
for (int i = 0; i < list.size();) {
if (wanted(list.get(i))) {
++ i;
} else {
list.remove(i);
}
}
return list;
}
@Override
void populate(Random rnd) {
ListBenchmark.populate(list, rnd);
}
private final ArrayList<Point> list;
}
private static class SequentialRemoveByIndex extends FilterStrategy {
public SequentialRemoveByIndex() {
list = new LinkedList<Point>();
}
@Override
void clear() {
list.clear();
}
@Override
Collection<Point> filter() {
for (int i = 0; i < list.size();) {
if (wanted(list.get(i))) {
++ i;
} else {
list.remove(i);
}
}
return list;
}
@Override
void populate(Random rnd) {
ListBenchmark.populate(list, rnd);
}
private final LinkedList<Point> list;
}
private static class ShiftDown extends FilterStrategy {
public ShiftDown() {
list = new ArrayList<Point>();
}
@Override
void clear() {
list.clear();
}
@Override
Collection<Point> filter() {
int inputSize = list.size();
int outputSize = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < inputSize; ++ i) {
Point p = list.get(i);
if (wanted(p)) {
list.set(outputSize++, p);
}
}
list.subList(outputSize, inputSize).clear();
return list;
}
@Override
void populate(Random rnd) {
ListBenchmark.populate(list, rnd);
}
private final ArrayList<Point> list;
}
}
Array copy is a rather unexpensive operation. It is done on a very basic level (its a java native static method) and you are not yet in the range where the performance becomes really important.
In your example you copy approx 12000 times an array of size 150000 (on average). This does not take much time. I tested it here on my laptop and it took less than 500 ms.
Update I used the following code to measure on my laptop (Intel P8400)
import java.util.Random;
public class PerformanceArrayCopy {
public static void main(String[] args) {
int[] lengths = new int[] { 10000, 50000, 125000, 250000 };
int[] loops = new int[] { 1000, 5000, 10000, 20000 };
for (int length : lengths) {
for (int loop : loops) {
Object[] list1 = new Object[length];
Object[] list2 = new Object[length];
for (int k = 0; k < 100; k++) {
System.arraycopy(list1, 0, list2, 0, list1.length);
}
int[] len = new int[loop];
int[] ofs = new int[loop];
Random rnd = new Random();
for (int k = 0; k < loop; k++) {
len[k] = rnd.nextInt(length);
ofs[k] = rnd.nextInt(length - len[k]);
}
long n = System.nanoTime();
for (int k = 0; k < loop; k++) {
System.arraycopy(list1, ofs[k], list2, ofs[k], len[k]);
}
n = System.nanoTime() - n;
System.out.print("length: " + length);
System.out.print("\tloop: " + loop);
System.out.print("\truntime [ms]: " + n / 1000000);
System.out.println();
}
}
}
}
Some results:
length: 10000 loop: 10000 runtime [ms]: 47
length: 50000 loop: 10000 runtime [ms]: 228
length: 125000 loop: 10000 runtime [ms]: 575
length: 250000 loop: 10000 runtime [ms]: 1198