Collections
Arrays, ArrayList
, and HashMap
are all "collections"
of objects. Importantly, they also aren't the only possible
kinds of collections.
Java provides support for a wide range of different collection types through "The Collections Framework."1
1
There is nothing really special about these interfaces and classes that mean they deserve such a name. I view it as a marketing term. There was a period of time before which Java did not have ArrayList
, HashMap
, etc. and when they were added they said "this is the new collections framework"
instead of "we've added these dozen classes."