Java collections convert a string to a list of characters

In Java8 you can use streams I suppose.
List of Character objects:

List<Character> chars = str.chars()
    .mapToObj(e->(char)e).collect(Collectors.toList());

And set could be obtained in a similar way:

Set<Character> charsSet = str.chars()
    .mapToObj(e->(char)e).collect(Collectors.toSet());