Properly removing an Integer from a List

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Here’s a nice pitfall I just encountered.
Consider a list of integers:

List<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();
list.add(5);
list.add(6);
list.add(7);
list.add(1);

Any educated guess on what happens when you execute list.remove(1)? What about list.remove(new Integer(1))? This can cause some nasty bugs.

What is the proper way to differentiate between remove(int index), which removes an element from given index and remove(Object o), which removes an element by reference, when dealing with lists of integers?

The main point to consider here is the one @Nikita mentioned – exact parameter matching takes precedence over auto-boxing.

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