Difference Between Collection And Collections in Java With Tabular Form

Both Collection and Collections reside in java.util.package. The main difference between them is, Collection is an interface for specifying methods that needs to be implemented by all the collection class whereas Collections is a class that offers utility methods to work with collections.

Difference between Collection and Collections in Java

Collection

The collection is an interface that represents a group of individual objects as a single entity. It is the root interface of the collection framework that specifies several methods which are applied to all collections.

The collection interface is inherited by List, Set and Queue interfaces and its implementing classes are ranging from ArrayList to TreeSet.

Syntax :

public interface Collection<T> extends Iterable<T>

contains(), add(), isEmpty(), remove() and clear() are some of the important methods

Collections

Collections is a utility class that consists of static methods which operate on collections. It provides handy methods that can be used directly on collection objects such as searching and sorting purposes.

Syntax:

public class Collections extends Object

Java program to demonstrate the working of Collections in Java

Program:

public class CollectionExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<String> names = new ArrayList<>();
        names.add("Sandeep");   // add() method is a method of collection interface
        names.add("Vinay");
        names.add("Kui");
        names.add("Sachin");
        System.out.println("Before sorting :: "+ names);
        Collections.sort(names);  // sort() would sort  a list in natural order
        System.out.println("After sorting :: "+ names);

    }
}

Output:

Before sorting :: [Sandeep, Vinay, Kui, Sachin]
After sorting :: [Kui, Sachin, Sandeep, Vinay]