This class represents a heterogeneous collection of Permissions. That is, it contains different types of Permission objects, organized into PermissionCollections. For example, if any java.io.FilePermission objects are added to an instance of this class, they are all stored in a single PermissionCollection. It is the PermissionCollection returned by a call to the newPermissionCollection method in the FilePermission class. Similarly, any java.lang.RuntimePermission objects are stored in the PermissionCollection returned by a call to the newPermissionCollection method in the RuntimePermission class. Thus, this class represents a collection of PermissionCollections.

When the add method is called to add a Permission, the Permission is stored in the appropriate PermissionCollection. If no such collection exists yet, the Permission object's class is determined and the newPermissionCollection method is called on that class to create the PermissionCollection and add it to the Permissions object. If newPermissionCollection returns null, then a default PermissionCollection that uses a hashtable will be created and used. Each hashtable entry stores a Permission object as both the key and the value.

Enumerations returned via the elements method are not fail-fast. Modifications to a collection should not be performed while enumerating over that collection.

Adds a permission object to the PermissionCollection for the class the permission belongs to. For example, if permission is a FilePermission, it is added to the FilePermissionCollection stored in this Permissions object. This method creates a new PermissionCollection object (and adds the permission to it) if an appropriate collection does not yet exist.

Checks to see if this object's PermissionCollection for permissions of the specified permission's class implies the permissions expressed in the permission object. Returns true if the combination of permissions in the appropriate PermissionCollection (e.g., a FilePermissionCollection for a FilePermission) together imply the specified permission.

For example, suppose there is a FilePermissionCollection in this Permissions object, and it contains one FilePermission that specifies "read" access for all files in all subdirectories of the "/tmp" directory, and another FilePermission that specifies "write" access for all files in the "/tmp/scratch/foo" directory. Then if the implies method is called with a permission specifying both "read" and "write" access to files in the "/tmp/scratch/foo" directory, true is returned.

Additionally, if this PermissionCollection contains the AllPermission, this method will always return true.