RandomAccess接口

ArrayList实现了RandomAccess接口，怀着好奇的心情去看了一下RandomAccess接口，结果：

/*
 * Copyright (c) 2000, 2006, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
 * ORACLE PROPRIETARY/CONFIDENTIAL. Use is subject to license terms.
 */

package java.util;

/**
 * Marker interface used by List implementations to indicate that
 * they support fast (generally constant time) random access.  The primary
 * purpose of this interface is to allow generic algorithms to alter their
 * behavior to provide good performance when applied to either random or
 * sequential access lists.
 *
 *

The best algorithms for manipulating random access lists (such as
 * ArrayList) can produce quadratic behavior when applied to
 * sequential access lists (such as LinkedList).  Generic list
 * algorithms are encouraged to check whether the given list is an
 * instanceof this interface before applying an algorithm that would
 * provide poor performance if it were applied to a sequential access list,
 * and to alter their behavior if necessary to guarantee acceptable
 * performance.
 *
 *

It is recognized that the distinction between random and sequential
 * access is often fuzzy.  For example, some List implementations
 * provide asymptotically linear access times if they get huge, but constant
 * access times in practice.  Such a List implementation
 * should generally implement this interface.  As a rule of thumb, a
 * List implementation should implement this interface if,
 * for typical instances of the class, this loop:
 *

  *     for (int i=0, n=list.size(); i < n; i++)
  *         list.get(i);
  * 

 * runs faster than this loop:
 *

  *     for (Iterator i=list.iterator(); i.hasNext(); )
  *         i.next();
  * 

 *
 *

This interface is a member of the
 *
 * Java Collections Framework.
 *
 * @since 1.4
 */
public interface RandomAccess {
}

一大串英文+一个空接口，百思不得其姐，难道实现它就是为了挂个名？无意中一天在Collections类中看到了shuffle方法：

 public static void shuffle(List list, Random rnd) {
        int size = list.size();
        if (size < SHUFFLE_THRESHOLD || list instanceof RandomAccess) {//看这里
            for (int i=size; i>1; i--)
                swap(list, i-1, rnd.nextInt(i));
        } else {
            Object arr[] = list.toArray();

            // Shuffle array
            for (int i=size; i>1; i--)
                swap(arr, i-1, rnd.nextInt(i));

            // Dump array back into list
            ListIterator it = list.listIterator();
            for (int i=0; i                 it.next();
                it.set(arr[i]);
            }
        }
    }
看第三行代码，首先判断list是不是RandomAccess的实例，如果是则swap，否则...

百度翻译了以下，得知shuffle=洗牌，大概猜想这个方法用来打乱list中的顺序。可以看到else里执行过程要比if里的复杂，也就是说if里的代码执行效率要高点，那么也就是说，实现RandomAccess接口是为了执行if中的代码块，也就是说告诉类用某种算法来执行程序。好心的网友给出解释：List 实现所使用的标记接口，用来表明其支持快速（通常是固定时间）随机访问。此接口的主要目的是允许一般的算法更改其行为，从而在将其应用到随机或连续访问列表时能提供良好的性能。