Limiting the max size of a HashMap in Java

Question

I want to limit the maximum size of a HashMap to take metrics on a variety of hashing algorithms that I'm implementing. I looked at the loadfactor in one of HashMap's overloaded constructors.

HashMap(int initialCapacity, float loadFactor) 

I tried setting the loadFactor to 0.0f in the constructor (meaning that I don't want the HashMap to grow in size EVER) but javac calls this invalid:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal load factor: 0.0
        at java.util.HashMap.<init>(HashMap.java:177)
        at hashtables.CustomHash.<init>(Main.java:20)
        at hashtables.Main.main(Main.java:70) Java Result: 1

Is there another way to limit the size of HashMap so it doesn't grow ever?

Answer 1

You could create a new class like this to limit the size of a HashMap:

public class MaxSizeHashMap<K, V> extends LinkedHashMap<K, V> {
    private final int maxSize;

    public MaxSizeHashMap(int maxSize) {
        this.maxSize = maxSize;
    }

    @Override
    protected boolean removeEldestEntry(Map.Entry<K, V> eldest) {
        return size() > maxSize;
    }
}