这可能不是您想要的答案，但是集合类的JavaDoc实际上非常具有描述性。复制/粘贴:

An ordered collection (also known as a sequence). The user of this interface has precise control over where in the list each element is inserted. The user can access elements by their integer index (position in the list), and search for elements in the list. Unlike sets, lists typically allow duplicate elements. More formally, lists typically allow pairs of elements e1 and e2 such that e1.equals(e2), and they typically allow multiple null elements if they allow null elements at all. It is not inconceivable that someone might wish to implement a list that prohibits duplicates, by throwing runtime exceptions when the user attempts to insert them, but we expect this usage to be rare.

这里有一个关于groovy的明确例子。我创建了一个集合和一个列表。 然后我尝试在每个列表中存储20个随机生成的值。生成的值范围为0 ~ 5

s = [] as Set
l = []

max = 5
print "random Numbers :"
20.times{
e = (int)Math.random()*max
s << e
l << e
print "$e, "
}


println "\n"
println "Set : $s "
println "list : $l

结果:

随机数:4,1,4,0,1,2,4,0,0,0,3,4,2,0,4,4,0,4,0,0,1,3,1,3

集合:[4,1,0,2,3]

列表:[4 1 4 0,1,2,4,0,0,3、4、3、2 0 4 0,1,3,1,3)

你可以看到区别在于:

Set不允许重复值。 列表允许重复值。

嗨，已经给出了这么多答案，让我指出一些到目前为止没有提到的地方:

大多数的List实现(ArrayList,Vector)实现了RandomAccess接口，这是一个快速访问的标记接口。Set的实现都没有这样做。 List使用一个特殊的迭代器，称为ListIterator，它支持双向迭代。Set使用只支持单向迭代的迭代器 HashSet占用的内存是ArrayList的5.5倍 相同数量的元素。

这可能不是您想要的答案，但是集合类的JavaDoc实际上非常具有描述性。复制/粘贴:

An ordered collection (also known as a sequence). The user of this interface has precise control over where in the list each element is inserted. The user can access elements by their integer index (position in the list), and search for elements in the list. Unlike sets, lists typically allow duplicate elements. More formally, lists typically allow pairs of elements e1 and e2 such that e1.equals(e2), and they typically allow multiple null elements if they allow null elements at all. It is not inconceivable that someone might wish to implement a list that prohibits duplicates, by throwing runtime exceptions when the user attempts to insert them, but we expect this usage to be rare.

List Vs Set

1) Set不允许重复。列表允许重复。基于Set的实现，它还维护插入顺序。

LinkedHashSet。它维护插入顺序。请参考此处

2)包含方法。根据集合的性质，它将为访问提供更好的性能。最好的情况是o(1)但是List有调用contains的性能问题。