Session J6: Arrays and Hash Tables

In this laboratory session, you will learn about two of Java's key built-in objects for managing groups of data: arrays and hash tables. The goals of this laboratory are to:

• motivate grouping of objects;
• consider design issues pertaining to size of groups and indexing of objects within groups;
• introduce two key grouping mechanisms in Java: arrays and hash tables;
• compare and contrast these mechanisms; and
• apply these mechanisms to a variety of problems.

Your instructor will tell you which of the proposed experiments you are to perform.

Prerequisite skills:

• Familiarity with objects in Java
• Java's looping mechanisms: while and for loops
• Java's conditional execution statements: if and switch

Required files:

• CountWords.java
• NewScoreCounter.java
• ScoreCounter.java
• SimpleInput.java
• SimpleOutput.java