----- Original Message -----
From: "Henri Yandell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Jakarta Commons Developers List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
"Morgan Delagrange" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 12:48 PM
Subject: Re: [COLLECTIONS] Comparator observations


>
>
> On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, Morgan Delagrange wrote:
>
> > First, I'm not sure all of these Comparators are generic enough to
include
> > in Collections.  ComparableComparator and ReverseComparator seem to be
right
> > on.  NumericStringComparator, PackageNameComparator, and UrlComparator
seem
> > too specific for Collections though.
>
> Agreed. Should UrlComparator live with Url?

I guess.  It seems like a class with limited usefulness, which I tried to
flesh out in my email to Michael from a few minutes ago.

> The other two I guess are more
> Util stuff? Hard to package them. I solved it by having all my comparators
> in a compare pacakge.

How about I just re-add UrlComparator and NumericStringComparator to Util
for now, and we can go from there?

> >
> > It seems that if a Collection or Comparator would seem out of place in
the
> > JDK, it's not a good candidate for Collections.  PackageNameComparator
and
> > UrlComparator in particular seem out of place.  Most comparators are
highly
> > specific, and comparators are also very easy to write.  Consequently, we
> > should be wary of which Comparators we include.  Bay, would you object
to
> > removing NumericStringComparator, PackageNameComparator and
UrlComparator?
>
> PackageNameComparator is pretty specific. I'm happy for this to die.

OK, I won't re-add that to Util unless you say so.

> UrlComparator, it seems a nice thing to have available as a standard
> component. If there were to be a comparator project, then I would
> definitely want that in there.
>
> NumericStringComparator however is something I've often seen people asking
> for. It's not a simple implementation (well for the level of people asking
> for), so I think it has a lot of uses. It's all opinion though, so I
> dunno.

To me, this one does stand out from the other two as potentially
appropriate.  What would a class like this be used for?  It still _sounds_ a
little application-specific, but maybe not.

> >
> > Second, none of the Comparators are Serializable.  Shouldn't they be, so
> > that their corresponding Collections will be serializable?
>
> I didn't realise this was a feature :)

The JavaDocs for Comparator recommend making Comparators serializable unless
there's a specific reason not to.  Good advice.

> How does the serializable
> Comparator affect the Collection being sorted? Or is this for TreeSet etc?
> If so, then making them Serializable makes tons of sense.

Right, you can't serialize a TreeSet (or any Sorted collection) that is
ordered by an unserializable Comparator.  Otherwise there's no way to order
Objects that are added after de-serialization.

> Hen
>
>
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