Creating Dictionary in java?

Question

Everywhere on net, here is the way

Map<String, String> map = new HashMap<String, String>();
map.put("dog", "type of animal");
System.out.println(map.get("dog"));

My point is should it not be Treemap considering dictionary has to be sorted? Agreed lookup wont be optimized in case of Treemap but considering sorting its best data structure

UPDATE :- one more requirement is return the lexicographically nearest word if the word searched is not present . I am not sure how to achieve it?

Answer 1

If you need the map sorted by its keys, then use TreeMap, which "...provides guaranteed log(n) time cost for the containsKey, get, put and remove operations." If not, use the more general HashMap (which "...provides constant-time performance for the basic operations (get and put), assuming the hash function disperses the elements properly among the buckets..."), or one of the other Map implementations, depending on your need.