The Java Collections Framework (JCF) is the standard Java library for
representing and manipulating collections (i.e., objects that represent
a group of objects, such as sets, lists, etc.). Although JCF provides
adequate functionality for many purposes, it does not offer any
mechanism for accessing directly the objects stored in collections
apart from the standard Java references. This absence is a crucial
functionality exhibited by many other widespread Java and non-Java
collection libraries. In this paper, we carry out a reengineering
process on the JCF to add this kind of alternative access paths, which
we give the name of shortcuts. This process relies on a framework
called Shortcut-Based Framework, which has been defined as library-
independent. We present this framework and then we show how it may be
tailored to the specific case of the JCF. The resulting JCF with
shortcuts library is fully compatible with the original one (i.e.,
programs using the original JCF are not required to be modified), and
exhibits good behaviour with respect to efficiency, reliability and
internal quality. As an additional benefit of the framework, we mention
that it can be applied to other collection libraries, as we have done
before with an Ada95 one.Postprint (published version
