What are best practices for working with CopyOnWriteArrayList?

CopyOnWriteArrayList is a concurrent variant of ArrayList that is useful in scenarios where reads vastly outnumber writes. It provides a thread-safe way of accessing and modifying the list, but it has its own best practices to ensure optimal performance.

Best Practices for Using CopyOnWriteArrayList

• Use It for Reading More Than Writing: Because CopyOnWriteArrayList creates a new array on every write operation, it's best to use it in applications where reads are frequent and writes are rare.
• Avoid Large Write Operations: If your application requires frequent updates, consider a different data structure, as large write operations could lead to unnecessary memory usage.
• Iterate without Fail-Fast Behavior: You can safely iterate over a CopyOnWriteArrayList while adding or removing elements, thanks to its copy-on-write mechanism.
• Consider Memory Usage: Be mindful of memory consumption when adding elements in bulk as it creates a new copy of the array each time.
• Keep Operations Atomic: While CopyOnWriteArrayList is thread-safe, ensure that the logic involving it maintains atomicity when performing operations that depend on multiple reads/writes.

Example Usage