Java7 WeakHashMap isEmpty() seems wrong

Question

I'm trying to use Java7's WeakHashMap and I found its isEmpty() method give me wrong results.

import java.util.Map;
import java.util.WeakHashMap;

public class Test
{

    public static void main(final String[] args)
    {
        final Map<String, Boolean> map = new WeakHashMap<>();

        String b = new String("B");
        map.put(b, true);
        b = null;

        System.gc();
        System.out.println(map.isEmpty());
        System.out.println(map.keySet().isEmpty());
        System.out.println(map);
    }

}

The actual result:

false

true

{}

That is to say,

map.isEmpty() and map.keySet().isEmpty() is not consistent. Can someone help me to understand it? Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

You should read the javadoc of WeakHashMap:

The behavior of the WeakHashMap class depends in part upon the actions of the garbage collector, so several familiar (though not required) Map invariants do not hold for this class. Because the garbage collector may discard keys at any time, a WeakHashMap may behave as though an unknown thread is silently removing entries. In particular, even if you synchronize on a WeakHashMap instance and invoke none of its mutator methods, it is possible for the size method to return smaller values over time, for the isEmpty method to return false and then true, for the containsKey method to return true and later false for a given key, for the get method to return a value for a given key but later return null, for the put method to return null and the remove method to return false for a key that previously appeared to be in the map, and for successive examinations of the key set, the value collection, and the entry set to yield successively smaller numbers of elements.

The short of all that is the the effects you've seen are entirely valid.

Answer 2

WeakHashMap::isEmpty says:

...This result is a snapshot, and may not reflect unprocessed entries that will be removed before next attempted access because they are no longer referenced.

So you would expect that isEmpty() returns the correct value after GC and after access. This code demonstrates this:

public class Scratch1 {
    public static void main(final String[] args) {
        final Map<String, Boolean> map = new WeakHashMap<>();

        String b = new String("B");
        map.put(b, true);
        b = null;

        System.gc();

        // map not internally accessed at this point
        System.out.println(map.isEmpty());

        // let's access the Map's internals (and hopefully coerce
        // it into removing no-longer-referenced keys)
        System.out.println(map.keySet()
                              .isEmpty());

        // map HAS now been accessed
        System.out.println(map.isEmpty());
    }

}

Yields:

false
true
true