Java: Retrieving an element from a HashSet

If you know what element you want to retrieve, then you already have the element. The only question for a Set to answer, given an element, is whether it contains() it or not.

If you want to iterator over the elements, just use a Set.iterator().

It sounds like what you’re trying to do is designate a canonical element for an equivalence class of elements. You can use a Map<MyObject,MyObject> to do this. See this Stack Overflow question or this one for a discussion.

If you are really determined to find an element that .equals() your original element with the constraint that you must use the HashSet, I think you’re stuck with iterating over it and checking equals() yourself. The API doesn’t let you grab something by its hash code. So you could do:

MyObject findIfPresent(MyObject source, HashSet<MyObject> set)
{
   if (set.contains(source)) {
      for (MyObject obj : set) {
        if (obj.equals(source))
          return obj;
      }
   }

  return null;
}

It is brute-force and O(n) ugly, but if that’s what you need to do…