Range-view Operations on SortedSet

The Range-view operations are somewhat analogous to those provided by the List interface, but there is one big difference. Range-views of a sorted set remain valid even if the backing sorted set is modified directly. This is feasible because the endpoints of a range view of a sorted set are absolute points in the element-space, rather than specific elements in the backing collection (as is the case for lists). A range-view of a sorted set is really just a window onto whatever portion of the set lies in the designated part of the element-space. Changes to the range-view write back to the backing sorted set and vice-versa. Thus, it's OK to use range-views on sorted sets for long periods of time (unlike range-views on lists). Sorted sets provide three range-view operations. The first, subSet takes two endpoints (like subList). Rather than indices, the endpoints are objects. They must be comparable to the elements in the sorted set (using the set's Comparator or the natural ordering of its elements, whichever the set uses to order itself). Like subList the range is half-open, including its low endpoint but excluding the high one.
Thus, the following one-liner tells you how many words between "doorbell" and "pickle", including "doorbell" but excluding "pickle", are contained in a SortedSet of strings called dictionary:

int count = dictionary.subSet("doorbell", "pickl

See also post -Operations on SortedSet