Difference between Collection<String> And StringCollection

Question

As the title suggests I would like to know what the difference is between a collection for which I have to set the type of items and all the specialized collections for only one datatype. Does it matter which one I use?

And also is there a difference between List<String> and Collection<String> ?

String is just an example, I'm asking in general.

Answer 1

Strongly typed string collection is to prevent upcasting or downcasting overhead and optimized for strings.

The reason for providing StringCollection is to provide better performance. However, I would be surprised if there is a huge performance difference between them.

Consider the following recommendations for using StringCollection: Ref

• Use StringCollection to store string data that changes frequently and needs to be retrieved in large chunks.
• Use StringCollection for binding string data to a data grid. This avoids the cost of downcasting it to a string during retrieval.
• Do not use StringCollection for sorting strings or to store presorted data.