A linear collection that supports element insertion and removal at both ends. The name deque is short for "double ended queue" and is usually pronounced "deck". Most Deque implementations place no fixed limits on the number of elements they may contain, but this interface supports capacity-restricted deques as well as those with no fixed size limit.
This interface defines methods to access the elements at both ends of the deque. Methods are provided to insert, remove, and examine the element. Each of these methods exists in two forms: one throws an exception if the operation fails, the other returns a special value (either null or false, depending on the operation). The latter form of the insert operation is designed specifically for use with capacity-restricted Deque implementations; in most implementations, insert operations cannot fail.
The twelve methods described above are summarized in the following table:
| First Element (Head) | Last Element (Tail) | |||
| Throws exception | Special value | Throws exception | Special value | |
| Insert | addFirst(e) |
offerFirst(e) |
addLast(e) |
offerLast(e) |
| Remove | removeFirst() |
pollFirst() |
removeLast() |
pollLast() |
| Examine | getFirst() |
peekFirst() |
getLast() |
peekLast() |
This interface extends the Queue interface. When a deque is
used as a queue, FIFO (First-In-First-Out) behavior results. Elements are
added at the end of the deque and removed from the beginning. The methods
inherited from the Queue interface are precisely equivalent to
Deque methods as indicated in the following table:
| Queue Method | Equivalent Deque Method |
add(e) |
addLast(e) |
offer(e) |
offerLast(e) |
remove() |
removeFirst() |
poll() |
pollFirst() |
element() |
getFirst() |
peek() |
peekFirst() |
Deques can also be used as LIFO (Last-In-First-Out) stacks. This
interface should be used in preference to the legacy Stack class.
When a deque is used as a stack, elements are pushed and popped from the
beginning of the deque. Stack methods are precisely equivalent to
Deque methods as indicated in the table below:
| Stack Method | Equivalent Deque Method |
push(e) |
addFirst(e) |
pop() |
removeFirst() |
peek() |
peekFirst() |
Note that the peek method works equally well when
a deque is used as a queue or a stack; in either case, elements are
drawn from the beginning of the deque.
This interface provides two methods to remove interior
elements, removeFirstOccurrence and
removeLastOccurrence.
Unlike the List interface, this interface does not
provide support for indexed access to elements.
While Deque implementations are not strictly required to prohibit the insertion of null elements, they are strongly encouraged to do so. Users of any Deque implementations that do allow null elements are strongly encouraged not to take advantage of the ability to insert nulls. This is so because null is used as a special return value by various methods to indicated that the deque is empty.
Deque implementations generally do not define element-based versions of the equals and hashCode methods, but instead inherit the identity-based versions from class Object.
This interface is a member of the Java Collections Framework.
extends
<E> | the type of elements held in this collection |