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• The Java Specialist: An Interview with Java Champion Heinz Kabutz

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Dr. Heinz Kabutz is well known for his Java Specialists’ Newsletter, initiated in November 2000, where he displays his acute grasp of the intricacies of the Java platform for an estimated 70,000 readers; for his work as a consultant; and for his workshops and trainings at his home on the Island of Crete where he has lived since 2006 -- where he is known to curl up on the beach with his laptop to hack away, in between dips in the Mediterranean. Kabutz was born of German parents and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, where he developed a love of programming in junior high school through his explorations on a ZX Spectrum computer. He received a B.S. from the University of Cape Town, and at 25, a Ph.D., both in computer science. He will be leading a two-hour hands-on lab session, HOL6500 – “Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks,” at this year’s JavaOne that will explore what causes deadlocks and how to solve them. Q: Tell us about your JavaOne plans.A: I am arriving on Sunday evening and have just one hands-on-lab to do on Monday morning. This is the first time that a non-Oracle team is doing a HOL at JavaOne under Oracle's stewardship and we are all a bit nervous about how it will turn out. Oracle has been immensely helpful in getting us set up. I have a great team helping me: Kirk Pepperdine, Dario Laverde, Benjamin Evans and Martijn Verburg from jClarity, Nathan Reynolds from Oracle, Henri Tremblay of OCTO Technology and Jeff Genender of Savoir Technologies. Monday will be hard work, but after that, I will hopefully get to network with fellow Java experts, attend interesting sessions and just enjoy San Francisco. Oh, and my kids have already given me a shopping list of things to get, like a GoPro Hero 2 dive housing for shooting those nice videos of Crete. (That's me at the beginning diving down.) Q: What sessions are you attending that we should know about?A: Sometimes the most unusual sessions are the best. I avoid the "big names". They often are spread too thin with all their sessions, which makes it difficult for them to deliver what I would consider deep content. I also avoid entertainers who might be good at presenting but who do not say that much.In 2010, I attended a session by Vladimir Yaroslavskiy where he talked about sorting. Although he struggled to speak English, what he had to say was spectacular. There was hardly anybody in the room, having not heard of Vladimir before. To me that was the highlight of 2010. Funnily enough, he was supposed to speak with Joshua Bloch, but if you remember, Google cancelled. If Bloch has been there, the room would have been packed to capacity.Q: Give us an update on the Java Specialists’ Newsletter.A: The Java Specialists' Newsletter continues being read by an elite audience around the world. The apostrophe in the name is significant.  It is a newsletter for Java specialists. When I started it twelve years ago, I was trying to find non-obvious things in Java to write about. Things that would be interesting to an advanced audience.As an April Fool's joke, I told my readers in Issue 44 that subscribing would remain free, but that they would have to pay US$5 to US$7 depending on their geographical location. I received quite a few angry emails from that one. I would have not earned that much from unsubscriptions. Most readers stay for a very long time.After Oracle bought Sun, the Java community held its breath for about two years whilst Oracle was figuring out what to do with Java. For a while, we were quite concerned that there was not much progress shown by Oracle. My newsletter still continued, but it was quite difficult finding new things to write about. We have probably about 70,000 readers, which is quite a small number for a Java publication. However, our readers are the top in the Java industry. So I don't mind having "only" 70000 readers, as long as they are the top 0.7%.Java concurrency is a very important topic that programmers think they should know about, but often neglect to fully understand. I continued writing about that and made some interesting discoveries. For example, in Issue 165, I showed how we can get thread starvation with the ReadWriteLock. This was a bug in Java 5, which was corrected in Java 6, but perhaps a bit too much. Whereas we could get starvation of writers in Java 5, in Java 6 we could now get starvation of readers. All of these interesting findings make their way into my courseware to help companies avoid these pitfalls.Another interesting discovery was how polymorphism works in the Server HotSpot compiler in Issue 157 and Issue 158. HotSpot can inline methods from interfaces that have only one implementation class in the JVM. When a new subclass is instantiated and called for the first time, the JVM will undo the previous optimization and re-optimize differently.Here is a little memory puzzle for your readers: public class JavaMemoryPuzzle {  private final int dataSize =      (int) (Runtime.getRuntime().maxMemory() * 0.6);  public void f() {    {      byte[] data = new byte[dataSize];    }    byte[] data2 = new byte[dataSize];  }  public static void main(String[] args) {    JavaMemoryPuzzle jmp = new JavaMemoryPuzzle();    jmp.f();  }}When you run this you will always get an OutOfMemoryError, even though the local variable data is no longer visible outside of the code block.So here comes the puzzle, that I'd like you to ponder a bit. If you very politely ask the VM to release memory, then you don't get an OutOfMemoryError: public class JavaMemoryPuzzlePolite {  private final int dataSize =      (int) (Runtime.getRuntime().maxMemory() * 0.6);  public void f() {    {      byte[] data = new byte[dataSize];    }    for(int i=0; i<10; i++) {      System.out.println("Please be so kind and release memory");    }    byte[] data2 = new byte[dataSize];  }  public static void main(String[] args) {    JavaMemoryPuzzlePolite jmp = new JavaMemoryPuzzlePolite();    jmp.f();    System.out.println("No OutOfMemoryError");  }}Why does this work? When I published this in my newsletter, I received over 400 emails from excited readers around the world, most of whom sent me the wrong explanation. After the 300th wrong answer, my replies became unfortunately a bit curt. Have a look at Issue 174 for a detailed explanation, but before you do, put on your thinking caps and try to figure it out yourself. Q: What do you think Java developers should know that they currently do not know?A: They should definitely get to know more about concurrency. It is a tough subject that most programmers try to avoid. Unfortunately we do come in contact with it. And when we do, we need to know how to protect ourselves and how to solve tricky system errors.Knowing your IDE is also useful. Most IDEs have a ton of shortcuts, which can make you a lot more productive in moving code around. Another thing that is useful is being able to read GC logs. Kirk Pepperdine has a great talk at JavaOne that I can recommend if you want to learn more. It's this: CON5405 – “Are Your Garbage Collection Logs Speaking to You?” Q: What are you looking forward to in Java 8?A: I'm quite excited about lambdas, though I must confess that I have not studied them in detail yet. Maurice Naftalin's Lambda FAQ is quite a good start to document what you can do with them. I'm looking forward to finding all the interesting bugs that we will now get due to lambdas obscuring what is really going on underneath, just like we had with generics.I am quite impressed with what the team at Oracle did with OpenJDK's performance. A lot of the benchmarks now run faster.Hopefully Java 8 will come with JSR 310, the Date and Time API. It still boggles my mind that such an important API has been left out in the cold for so long.What I am not looking forward to is losing perm space. Even though some systems run out of perm space, at least the problem is contained and they usually manage to work around it. In most cases, this is due to a memory leak in that region of memory. Once they bundle perm space with the old generation, I predict that memory leaks in perm space will be harder to find. More contracts for us, but also more pain for our customers.

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• Intelligence as a vector quantity

  - by Senthil Kumaran

  I am reading this wonderful book called "Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming" by Peter Seibel and I am at part wherein the conversation is with Joshua Bloch and I found this answer which is an important point for a programmer. The paragraph, goes something like this. There's this problem, which is, programming is so much of an intellectual meritocracy and often these people are the smartest people in the organization; therefore they figure they should be allowed to make all the decisions. But merely the fact they are the smartest people in the organization does not mean that they should be making all the decisions, because intelligence is not a scalar quantity; it's a vector quantity. Here at the last sentence, I fail to get the insight which is he trying to share. Can someone explain it in a little further as what he means by a vector quantity, possibly trying to present the same insight. Further down, I get the point that he is not taking about having an organization where non-technical people (sometimes clueless) can be managers of the technical people for some reason that they can spend more time to write emails well, because the very next statement following the above paragraph was. And if you lack empathy or emotional intelligence, then you shouldn't be designing APIs or GUIs or languages. I understand that he is saying that in Software engineering, programmers should know how the users will see their product and design for them. I felt the above paragraph was very interesting.

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• Windows CE and the Compact Framework are dead?

  - by Valter Minute

  This is one of the question that I’ve been asked more and more frequently at my public speeches and each time I meet customers. The announcement of the new Windows Phone 7 platform and the release of Visual Studio 2010 generated a bit of confusion around Windows CE and some of the technologies it supports. Windows CE is still alive and a lot of good programmers are working on the new releases (I had a chance to know some of them during the MVP summit in February). Here’s a blog post from Olivier Bloch that describes the situation and provides some good news about the OS: http://blogs.msdn.com/obloch/archive/2010/05/03/windows-ce-is-not-dead.aspx As you can read here, Windows Phone 7 keeps its “roots” inside Windows CE. Regarding the .NET Compact Framework, this article from the excellent “I know the answer (it’s 42)” blog from Abhinaba (it seems that we share a passion for photography, Douglas Adams and embedded development), explains that the .NET CF is the foundation of XNA and Silverlight implementation on the WP7 platform: http://blogs.msdn.com/abhinaba/archive/2010/03/18/what-is-netcf.aspx So Windows CE is here to stay, powering one of the most interesting smart phone platforms and ready to power also your devices. Add those blogs to your RSS reader list and stay tuned for more good news about CE and the Compact Framework!

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• Combine guava's ImmutableList and varargs

  - by Stas Kurilin

  I want create constructor that will take one or more integers and save it into field as ImmutableList. According to "The right way to use varargs to pass one or more arguments" by Bloch's Item 42 I create smt like class Foo{ private final ImmutableList<Integer> bar; public Foo(Integer first, Integer... other) { this.bar = ImmutableList.<Integer>builder() .add(first) .addAll(Arrays.asList(other)) .build(); } } Why builder doesn't get generic automatically? And, as it smells. How I can rewrite it?

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• Why use I-prefix for interfaces in Java?

  - by Lars Andren

  Is there some reason why people use I-prefix for interfaces in Java? It seems to be a C#-convention spilling over. For C# it makes sense, as the answers to this question explains. However, for Java a class declaration clearly states which class that is extended and which interfaces that are implemented: public class Crow extends Animal implements Bird I think Joshua Bloch didn't suggest this in Effective Java, and I think he usually makes a lot of sense. I get the I-verbing as presented in an answer to the question above, but is there some other use with this convention for Java?

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• How to effectively copy an array in java ?

  - by Tony

  The toArray method in ArrayList , Bloch uses both System.arraycopy and Arrays.copyOf to copy an array . public <T> T[] toArray(T[] a) { if (a.length < size) // Make a new array of a's runtime type, but my contents: return (T[]) Arrays.copyOf(elementData, size, a.getClass()); System.arraycopy(elementData, 0, a, 0, size); if (a.length > size) a[size] = null; return a; } How to compare these two copy method , when to use which ? Thanks.

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• Is -1 a magic number? An anti-pattern? A code smell? Quotes and guidelines from authorities

  - by polygenelubricants

  I've seen -1 used in various APIs, most commonly when searching into a "collection" with zero-based indices, usually to indicate the "not found" index. This "works" because -1 is never a legal index to begin with. It seems that any negative number should work, but I think -1 is almost always used, as some sort of (unwritten?) convention. I would like to limit the scope to Java at least for now. My questions are: What are the official words from Sun regarding using -1 as a "special" return value like this? What quotes are there regarding this issue, from e.g. James Gosling, Josh Bloch, or even other authoritative figures outside of Java? What were some of the notable discussions regarding this issue in the past?

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• Java 7 New Features

  - by John W.

  I have done some good reading on the new java.util.concurrent features being introduced with the java 7 release. For instance, Phaser, TransferQueue and the more exciting Fork Join Framework. I recently saw a power point made by Josh Bloch about even more features that are going to be introduced however that link has been lost. For example I remember one change is being able to build a Map the same way you can build an array for: Map myMap = {"1,Dog","2,Cat"}; and so forth (this may not be 100% correct but the idea is there) Does anyone know of a list or just can name some new things to look forward to? Note: I did see a question asked http://stackoverflow.com/questions/213958/new-features-in-java-7 however it was asked ~2 years ago and I am sure the list of updates are more concrete. Thanks!

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• Static factory pattern with EJB3/JBoss

  - by purecharger

  I'm fairly new to EJBs and full blown application servers like JBoss, having written and worked with special purpose standalone Java applications for most of my career, with limited use of JEE. I'm wondering about the best way to adapt a commonly used design pattern to EJB3 and JBoss: the static factory pattern. In fact this is Item #1 in Joshua Bloch's Effective Java book (2nd edition) I'm currently working with the following factory: public class CredentialsProcessorFactory { private static final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(CredentialsProcessorFactory.class); private static Map<CredentialsType, CredentialsProcessor> PROCESSORS = new HashMap<CredentialsType, CredentialsProcessor>(); static { PROCESSORS.put(CredentialsType.CSV, new CSVCredentialsProcessor()); } private CredentialsProcessorFactory() {} public static CredentialsProcessor getProcessor(CredentialsType type) { CredentialsProcessor p = PROCESSORS.get(type); if(p == null) throw new IllegalArgumentException("No CredentialsProcessor registered for type " + type.toString()); return p; } However, in the implementation classes of CredentialsProcessor, I require injected resources such as a PersistenceContext, so I have made the CredentialsProcessor interface a @Local interface, and each of the impl's marked with @Stateless. Now I can look them up in JNDI and use the injected resources. But now I have a disconnect because I am not using the factory anymore. My first thought was to change the getProcessor(CredentialsType) method to do a JNDI lookup and return the SLSB instance that is required, but then I need to configure and pass the proper qualified JNDI name. Before I go down that path, I wanted to do more research on accepted practices. How is this design pattern treated in EJB3 / JEE?

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• Is it bad practice to make a setter return "this"?

  - by Ken Liu

  Is it a good or bad idea to make setters in java return "this"? public Employee setName(String name){ this.name = name; return this; } This pattern can be useful because then you can chain setters like this: list.add(new Employee().setName("Jack Sparrow").setId(1).setFoo("bacon!")); instead of this: Employee e = new Employee(); e.setName("Jack Sparrow"); ...and so on... list.add(e); ...but it sort of goes against standard convention. I suppose it might be worthwhile just because it can make that setter do something else useful. I've seen this pattern used some places (e.g. JMock, JPA), but it seems uncommon, and only generally used for very well defined APIs where this pattern is used everywhere. Update: What I've described is obviously valid, but what I am really looking for is some thoughts on whether this is generally acceptable, and if there are any pitfalls or related best practices. I know about the Builder pattern but it is a little more involved then what I am describing - as Josh Bloch describes it there is an associated static Builder class for object creation.

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• Why does using Collections.emptySet() with generics work in assignment but not as a method parameter

  - by Karl von L

  So, I have a class with a constructor like this: public FilterList(Set<Integer> labels) { ... } and I want to construct a new FilterList object with an empty set. Following Joshua Bloch's advice in his book Effective Java, I don't want to create a new object for the empty set; I'll just use Collections.emptySet() instead: FilterList emptyList = new FilterList(Collections.emptySet()); This gives me an error, complaining that java.util.Set<java.lang.Object> is not a java.util.Set<java.lang.Integer>. OK, how about this: FilterList emptyList = new FilterList((Set<Integer>)Collections.emptySet()); This also gives me an error! Ok, how about this: Set<Integer> empty = Collections.emptySet(); FilterList emptyList = new FilterList(empty); Hey, it works! But why? After all, Java doesn't have type inference, which is why you get an unchecked conversion warning if you do Set<Integer> foo = new TreeSet() instead of Set<Integer> foo = new TreeSet<Integer>(). But Set<Integer> empty = Collections.emptySet(); works without even a warning. Why is that?

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• In Java it seems Public constructors are always a bad coding practice

  - by Adam Gent

  This maybe a controversial question and may not be suited for this forum (so I will not be insulted if you choose to close this question). It seems given the current capabilities of Java there is no reason to make constructors public ... ever. Friendly, private, protected are OK but public no. It seems that its almost always a better idea to provide a public static method for creating objects. Every Java Bean serialization technology (JAXB, Jackson, Spring etc...) can call a protected or private no-arg constructor. My questions are: I have never seen this practice decreed or written down anywhere? Maybe Bloch mentions it but I don't own is book. Is there a use case other than perhaps not being super DRY that I missed? EDIT: I explain why static methods are better. .1. For one you get better type inference. For example See Guava's http://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/wiki/CollectionUtilitiesExplained .2. As a designer of the class you can later change what is returned with a static method. .3. Dealing with constructor inheritance is painful especially if you have to pre-calculate something.

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• Serializing and deserializing a map with key as string

  - by Grace K

  Hi! I am intending to serialize and deserialize a hashmap whose key is a string. From Josh Bloch's Effective Java, I understand the following. P.222 "For example, consider the case of a harsh table. The physical representation is a sequence of hash buckets containing key-value entries. Which bucket an entry is placed in is a function of the hash code of the key, which is not, in general guaranteed to be the same from JVM implementation to JVM implementation. In fact, it isn't even guranteed to be the same from run to run on the same JVM implementation. Therefore accepting the default serialized form for a hash table would constitute a serious bug. Serializing and deserializing the hash table could yield an object whose invariants were seriously corrupt." My questions are: 1) In general, would overriding the equals and hashcode of the key class of the map resolve this issue and the map can be correctly restored? 2) If my key is a String and the String class is already overriding the hashCode() method, would I still have problem described above. (I am seeing a bug which makes me think this is probably still a problem even though the key is String with overriding hashCode.) 3)Previously, I get around this issue by serializing an array of entries (key, value) and when deserializing I would reconstruct the map. I am wondering if there is a better approach. 4) If the answers to question 1 and 2 are that I still can't be guaranteed. Could someone explain why? If the hashCodes are the same would they go to the same buckets across JVMs? Thanks, Grace

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• Creation of Objects: Constructors or Static Factory Methods

  - by Rachel

  I am going through Effective Java and some of my things which I consider as standard are not suggested by the book, for instance creation of object, I was under the impression that constructors are the best way of doing it and books says we should make use of static factory methods, I am not able to few some advantages and so disadvantages and so am asking this question, here are the benefits of using it. Advantages: One advantage of static factory methods is that, unlike constructors, they have names. A second advantage of static factory methods is that, unlike constructors, they are not required to create a new object each time they’re invoked. A third advantage of static factory methods is that, unlike constructors, they can return an object of any subtype of their return type. A fourth advantage of static factory methods is that they reduce the verbosity of creating parameterized type instances. I am not able to understand this advantage and would appreciate if someone can explain this point Disadvantages: The main disadvantage of providing only static factory methods is that classes without public or protected constructors cannot be subclassed. A second disadvantage of static factory methods is that they are not readily distinguishable from other static methods.I am not getting this point and so would really appreciate some explanation. Reference: Effective Java, Joshua Bloch, Edition 2, pg: 5-10 Also, How to decide to use whether to go for Constructor or Static Factory Method for Object Creation ?

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• Locking database edit by key name

  - by Will Glass

  I need to prevent simultaneous edits to a database field. Users are executing a push operation on a structured data field, so I want to sequence the operations, not simply ignore one edit and take the second. Essentially I want to do synchronized(key name) { push value onto the database field } and set up the synchronized item so that only one operation on "key name" will occur at a time. (note: I'm simplifying, it's not always a simple push). A crude way to do this would be a global synchronization, but that bottlenecks the entire app. All I need to do is sequence two simultaneous writes with the same key, which is rare but annoying occurrence. This is a web-based java app, written with Spring (and using JPA/MySQL). The operation is triggered by a user web service call. (the root cause is when a user sends two simultaneous http requests with the same key). I've glanced through the Doug Lea/Josh Bloch/et al Concurrency in Action, but don't see an obvious solution. Still, this seems simple enough I feel there must be an elegant way to do this.

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• post increment operator java

  - by srandpersonia

  I can't make heads or tails of the following code from "java puzzlers" by joshua bloch. public class Test22{ public static void main(String args[]){ int j=0; for(int i=0;i<100;i++){ j=j++; } System.out.println(j); //prints 0 int a=0,b=0; a=b++; System.out.println(a); System.out.println(b); //prints 1 } } I can't get the part where j prints 0. According to the author, j=j++ is similar to temp=j; j=j+1; j=temp; But a=b++ makes b 1. So it should've evaluated like this, a=b b=b+1 By following the same logic, shouldn't j=j++ be evaluated as, j=j j=j+1 Where does the temp come into picture here? Any explanations would be much appreciated. << I'm breaking my head over this. ;) Thanks in advance.

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• Java Builder pattern with Generic type bounds

  - by I82Much

  Hi all, I'm attempting to create a class with many parameters, using a Builder pattern rather than telescoping constructors. I'm doing this in the way described by Joshua Bloch's Effective Java, having private constructor on the enclosing class, and a public static Builder class. The Builder class ensures the object is in a consistent state before calling build(), at which point it delegates the construction of the enclosing object to the private constructor. Thus public class Foo { // Many variables private Foo(Builder b) { // Use all of b's variables to initialize self } public static final class Builder { public Builder(/* required variables */) { } public Builder var1(Var var) { // set it return this; } public Foo build() { return new Foo(this); } } } I then want to add type bounds to some of the variables, and thus need to parametrize the class definition. I want the bounds of the Foo class to be the same as that of the Builder class. public class Foo<Q extends Quantity> { private final Unit<Q> units; // Many variables private Foo(Builder<Q> b) { // Use all of b's variables to initialize self } public static final class Builder<Q extends Quantity> { private Unit<Q> units; public Builder(/* required variables */) { } public Builder units(Unit<Q> units) { this.units = units; return this; } public Foo build() { return new Foo<Q>(this); } } } This compiles fine, but the compiler is allowing me to do things I feel should be compiler errors. E.g. public static final Foo.Builder<Acceleration> x_Body_AccelField = new Foo.Builder<Acceleration>() .units(SI.METER) .build(); Here the units argument is not Unit<Acceleration> but Unit<Length>, but it is still accepted by the compiler. What am I doing wrong here? I want to ensure at compile time that the unit types match up correctly.

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• Managing highly repetitive code and documentation in Java

  - by polygenelubricants

  Highly repetitive code is generally a bad thing, and there are design patterns that can help minimize this. However, sometimes it's simply inevitable due to the constraints of the language itself. Take the following example from java.util.Arrays: /** * Assigns the specified long value to each element of the specified * range of the specified array of longs. The range to be filled * extends from index <tt>fromIndex</tt>, inclusive, to index * <tt>toIndex</tt>, exclusive. (If <tt>fromIndex==toIndex</tt>, the * range to be filled is empty.) * * @param a the array to be filled * @param fromIndex the index of the first element (inclusive) to be * filled with the specified value * @param toIndex the index of the last element (exclusive) to be * filled with the specified value * @param val the value to be stored in all elements of the array * @throws IllegalArgumentException if <tt>fromIndex &gt; toIndex</tt> * @throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if <tt>fromIndex &lt; 0</tt> or * <tt>toIndex &gt; a.length</tt> */ public static void fill(long[] a, int fromIndex, int toIndex, long val) { rangeCheck(a.length, fromIndex, toIndex); for (int i=fromIndex; i<toIndex; i++) a[i] = val; } The above snippet appears in the source code 8 times, with very little variation in the documentation/method signature but exactly the same method body, one for each of the root array types int[], short[], char[], byte[], boolean[], double[], float[], and Object[]. I believe that unless one resorts to reflection (which is an entirely different subject in itself), this repetition is inevitable. I understand that as a utility class, such high concentration of repetitive Java code is highly atypical, but even with the best practice, repetition does happen! Refactoring doesn't always work because it's not always possible (the obvious case is when the repetition is in the documentation). Obviously maintaining this source code is a nightmare. A slight typo in the documentation, or a minor bug in the implementation, is multiplied by however many repetitions was made. In fact, the best example happens to involve this exact class: Google Research Blog - Extra, Extra - Read All About It: Nearly All Binary Searches and Mergesorts are Broken (by Joshua Bloch, Software Engineer) The bug is a surprisingly subtle one, occurring in what many thought to be just a simple and straightforward algorithm. // int mid =(low + high) / 2; // the bug int mid = (low + high) >>> 1; // the fix The above line appears 11 times in the source code! So my questions are: How are these kinds of repetitive Java code/documentation handled in practice? How are they developed, maintained, and tested? Do you start with "the original", and make it as mature as possible, and then copy and paste as necessary and hope you didn't make a mistake? And if you did make a mistake in the original, then just fix it everywhere, unless you're comfortable with deleting the copies and repeating the whole replication process? And you apply this same process for the testing code as well? Would Java benefit from some sort of limited-use source code preprocessing for this kind of thing? Perhaps Sun has their own preprocessor to help write, maintain, document and test these kind of repetitive library code? A comment requested another example, so I pulled this one from Google Collections: com.google.common.base.Predicates lines 276-310 (AndPredicate) vs lines 312-346 (OrPredicate). The source for these two classes are identical, except for: AndPredicate vs OrPredicate (each appears 5 times in its class) "And(" vs Or(" (in the respective toString() methods) #and vs #or (in the @see Javadoc comments) true vs false (in apply; ! can be rewritten out of the expression) -1 /* all bits on */ vs 0 /* all bits off */ in hashCode() &= vs |= in hashCode()

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• Implementation question involving implementing an interface

  - by Vivin Paliath

  I'm writing a set of collection classes for different types of Trees. I'm doing this as a learning exercise and I'm also hoping it turns out to be something useful. I really want to do this the right way and so I've been reading Effective Java and I've also been looking at the way Joshua Bloch implemented the collection classes by looking at the source. I seem to have a fair idea of what is being done, but I still have a few things to sort out. I have a Node<T> interface and an AbstractNode<T> class that implements the Node interface. I then created a GenericNode<T> (a node that can have 0 to n children, and that is part of an n-ary tree) class that extends AbstractNode<T> and implements Node<T>. This part was easy. Next, I created a Tree<T> interface and an AbstractTree<T> class that implements the Tree<T> interface. After that, I started writing a GenericTree<T> class that extends AbstractTree<T> and implements Tree<T>. This is where I started having problems. As far as the design is concerned, a GenericTree<T> can only consist of nodes of type GenericTreeNode<T>. This includes the root. In my Tree<T> interface I have: public interface Tree<T> { void setRoot(Node<T> root); Node<T> getRoot(); List<Node<T>> postOrder(); ... rest omitted ... } And, AbstractTree<T> implements this interface: public abstract class AbstractTree<T> implements Tree<T> { protected Node<T> root; protected AbstractTree() { } protected AbstractTree(Node<T> root) { this.root = root; } public void setRoot(Node<T> root) { this.root = root; } public Node<T> getRoot() { return this.root; } ... rest omitted ... } In GenericTree<T>, I can have: public GenericTree(Node<T> root) { super(root); } But what this means is that you can create a generic tree using any subtype of Node<T>. You can also set the root of a tree to any subtype of Node<T>. I want to be able to restrict the type of the node to the type of the tree that it can represent. To fix this, I can do this: public GenericTree(GenericNode<T> root) { super(root); } However, setRoot still accepts a parameter of type Node<T>. Which means a user can still create a tree with the wrong type of root node. How do I enforce this constraint? The only way I can think of doing is either: Do an instanceof which limits the check to runtime. I'm not a huge fan of this. Remove setRoot from the interface and have the base class implement this method. This means that it is not part of the contract and anyone who wants to make a new type of tree needs to remember to implement this method. Is there a better way? The second question I have concerns the return type of postOrder which is List<Node<T>>. This means that if a user is operating on a GenericTree<T> object and calls postOrder, he or she receives a list that consists of Node<T> objects. This means when iterating through (using a foreach construct) they would have perform an explicit cast to GenericNode<T> if they want to use methods that are only defined in that class. I don't like having to place this burden on the user. What are my options in this case? I can only think of removing the method from the interface and have the subclass implement this method making sure that it returns a list of appropriate subtype of Node<T>. However, this once again removes it from the contract and it's anyone who wants to create a new type of tree has to remember to implement this method. Is there a better way?

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