* <i>type</i> offering meaningful behavioral guarantees. This is substantially different from the
 * case of (say) {@link HashSet}, which is an <i>implementation</i>, with semantics that were
 * largely defined by its supertype.
 *
 * <p>For field types and method return types, you should generally use the immutable type (such as

      // needed to deal with GWT integer overflow
    }
    return hashCode;
  }

  /*
   * Serializes ImmutableLists as their logical contents. This ensures that
   * implementation types do not leak into the serialized representation.
   */
  @J2ktIncompatible // serialization
  static class SerializedForm implements Serializable {
    final Object[] elements;

    SerializedForm(Object[] elements) {

 * <i>type</i> offering meaningful behavioral guarantees. This is substantially different from the
 * case of (say) {@link HashSet}, which is an <i>implementation</i>, with semantics that were
 * largely defined by its supertype.
 *
 * <p>For field types and method return types, you should generally use the immutable type (such as

 * of {@code Comparator} for pre-Java-8 users, in the same sense that {@link FluentIterable} is an
 * enriched {@link Iterable} for pre-Java-8 users.
 *
 * <h3>Three types of methods</h3>
 *
 * Like other fluent types, there are three types of methods present: methods for <i>acquiring</i>,
 * <i>chaining</i>, and <i>using</i>.
 *
 * <h4>Acquiring</h4>
 *
 * <p>The common ways to get an instance of {@code Ordering} are:

    b = Arrays.<@Nullable Integer>asList(4, 8, null, 16, 23, 42);
    assertTrue(Iterators.elementsEqual(a.iterator(), b.iterator()));

    // Different Iterable types (still equal elements, though).
    a = ImmutableList.of(4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42);
    b = asList(4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42);
    assertTrue(Iterators.elementsEqual(a.iterator(), b.iterator()));

    // An element differs.

 * <p>As with any performance concerns, you should consider profiling your code (in a production
 * environment if possible) before spending a lot of effort on tweaking a particular element.
 *
 * <h3>Other types of preconditions</h3>
 *
 * <p>Not every type of precondition failure is supported by these methods. Continue to throw
 * standard JDK exceptions such as {@link java.util.NoSuchElementException} or {@link

     * nullness annotations in ImmutableMap and those in its own Map type. In response, it considers
     * the parameter and return type both to be platform types. As a result, Kotlin permits calls
     * that can lead to NullPointerException. That's unfortunate. But hopefully most Kotlin callers
     * use `get(key) ?: defaultValue` instead of this method, anyway.
     */
    V result = get(key);

      Comparator<? super K> comparator,
      boolean sameComparator,
      Iterable<? extends Entry<? extends K, ? extends V>> entries) {
    // "adding" type params to an array of a raw type should be safe as
    // long as no one can ever cast that same array instance back to a
    // raw type.
    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    Entry<K, V>[] entryArray = (Entry[]) Iterables.toArray(entries, EMPTY_ENTRY_ARRAY);

 * reference. It allows you to represent "a {@code T} that must be present" and a "a {@code T} that
 * might be absent" as two distinct types in your program, which can aid clarity.
 *
 * <p>Some uses of this class include
 *
 * <ul>
 *   <li>As a method return type, as an alternative to returning {@code null} to indicate that no
 *       value was available

   *     unrecoverable errors, callers should prefer more specific types, avoiding {@code
   *     Throwable.class} in particular.
   * @param fallback the {@link Function} to be called if {@code input} fails with the expected
   *     exception type. The function's argument is the input's exception. "The input's exception"