What are best practices for working with HashMap?

HashMap is a popular data structure in Java that provides an efficient way to store and retrieve key-value pairs. Here are some best practices for working with HashMap:

• Use appropriate initial capacity and load factor: This can improve performance by reducing the number of rehash operations.
• Use immutable keys: If keys are mutable, the HashMap may become inconsistent. Prefer using immutable objects as keys.
• Avoid using null keys and values: While HashMap allows one null key and multiple null values, it’s generally a good practice to avoid using nulls for better readability and stability.
• Consider thread safety: If your application is multi-threaded, either use Collections.synchronizedMap() or consider using ConcurrentHashMap.
• Leverage the compute methods: Java 8 introduced several methods like computeIfAbsent(), computeIfPresent(), etc., to simplify the manipulation of values.