There are several differences between HashMap and Hashtable in Java:
Hashtable is synchronized, whereas HashMap is not. This makes HashMap better for non-threaded applications, as unsynchronized Objects typically perform better than synchronized ones.
Hashtable does not allow null keys or values. HashMap allows one null key and any number of null values.
One of HashMap's subclasses is LinkedHashMap, so in the event that you'd want predictable iteration order (which is insertion order by default), you could easily swap out the HashMap for a LinkedHashMap. This wouldn't be as easy if you were using Hashtable.
Since synchronization is not an issue for you, I'd recommend HashMap. If synchronization becomes an issue, you may also look at ConcurrentHashMap.
The transient keyword in Java is used to indicate that a field should not be part of the serialization (which means saved, like to a file) process.
From the Java Language Specification, Java SE 7 Edition, Section 8.3.1.3. transient Fields:
Variables may be marked transient to
indicate that they are not part of the
persistent state of an object.
For example, you may have fields that are derived from other fields, and should only be done so programmatically, rather than having the state be persisted via serialization.
Here's a GalleryImage class which contains an image and a thumbnail derived from the image:
class GalleryImage implements Serializable
{
private Image image;
private transient Image thumbnailImage;
private void generateThumbnail()
{
// Generate thumbnail.
}
private void readObject(ObjectInputStream inputStream)
throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException
{
inputStream.defaultReadObject();
generateThumbnail();
}
}
In this example, the thumbnailImage is a thumbnail image that is generated by invoking the generateThumbnail method.
The thumbnailImage field is marked as transient, so only the original image is serialized rather than persisting both the original image and the thumbnail image. This means that less storage would be needed to save the serialized object. (Of course, this may or may not be desirable depending on the requirements of the system -- this is just an example.)
At the time of deserialization, the readObject method is called to perform any operations necessary to restore the state of the object back to the state at which the serialization occurred. Here, the thumbnail needs to be generated, so the readObject method is overridden so that the thumbnail will be generated by calling the generateThumbnail method.
For additional information, the article Discover the secrets of the Java Serialization API (which was originally available on the Sun Developer Network) has a section which discusses the use of and presents a scenario where the transient keyword is used to prevent serialization of certain fields.
Best Answer
Local variables are declared mostly to do some calculation. So it's the programmer's decision to set the value of the variable and it should not take a default value.
If the programmer, by mistake, did not initialize a local variable and it takes a default value, then the output could be some unexpected value. So in case of local variables, the compiler will ask the programmer to initialize it with some value before they access the variable to avoid the usage of undefined values.