Collections.emptyList() vs. new instance

java collections empty-list
mre picture mre · Apr 5, 2011 · Viewed 191.7k times · Source

In practice, is it better to return an empty list like this:

return Collections.emptyList();

Or like this:

return new ArrayList<Foo>();

Or is this completely dependent upon what you're going to do with the returned list?

Answer

aioobe picture aioobe · Apr 5, 2011

The main difference is that Collections.emptyList() returns an immutable list, i.e., a list to which you cannot add elements. (Same applies to the List.of() introduced in Java 9.)

In the rare cases where you do want to modify the returned list, Collections.emptyList() and List.of() are thus not a good choices.

I'd say that returning an immutable list is perfectly fine (and even the preferred way) as long as the contract (documentation) does not explicitly state differently.

In addition, emptyList() might not create a new object with each call.

Implementations of this method need not create a separate List object for each call. Using this method is likely to have comparable cost to using the like-named field. (Unlike this method, the field does not provide type safety.)

The implementation of emptyList looks as follows:

public static final <T> List<T> emptyList() {
    return (List<T>) EMPTY_LIST;
}

So if your method (which returns an empty list) is called very often, this approach may even give you slightly better performance both CPU and memory wise.

Related questions

Collections.emptyList() instead of null check?

If I have a rarely used collection in some class which may be instantiated many times, I may sometimes resort to the following "idiom" in order to save unnecessary object creations: List<Object> list = null; void add(Object …

Read More
Initialization of an ArrayList in one line

I wanted to create a list of options for testing purposes. At first, I did this: ArrayList<String> places = new ArrayList<String>(); places.add("Buenos Aires"); places.add("Córdoba"); places.add("La Plata"); Then, I …

Read More
How do I efficiently iterate over each entry in a Java Map?

If I have an object implementing the Map interface in Java and I wish to iterate over every pair contained within it, what is the most efficient way of going through the map? Will the ordering of elements depend on …

Read More