Is there a technical difference between the terms "length" and "size" (in programming, of course)? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
count vs length vs size in a collection

In Java in particular, on Strings, you call string.length(), whereas in Lists you call list.size(). Is there a technical difference between the two terms, seeing as a String is really just a list of chars?

Any comments appreciated.

Answer 1

In general, length() is used when something has a constant length, while size() is used on something with a variable length. Past that, I know of no good reason for using two nearly-synonymous terms.

Answer 2

Ideally, count would be the number of items, and size would be the amount of storage taken up (as in sizeof).

In practice, all three (including length, which is the most ambiguous) are muddled up in many widely-used libraries, so there's no point trying to impose a pattern on them at this stage.