> In your subsequent email, I found that the asXXX and toXXX variants to be too > similar to > make it clear which throws and which does not or other differences unless it > were a pervasive > pattern that all developers would know and use.
We encourage this convention: - Use "asXxx" to describe creating an Xxx view of the object; - Use "toXxx" to describe converting the object to an Xxx. There are two dimensions along which you might make the distinction: - If the object is mutable, a view would reflect state changes to the original, whereas a conversion would not (e.g., HashMap.values()); - Regardless of mutability, "as" suggests a more or less trivial operation (casting, wrapping with a trivial wrapper such as Collections.immutableSet), whereas "to" suggests a heavier operation that involves copying the data (StringBuffer.toString, List.toArray). In general, "as" operations are perceived as cheaper than "to" operations.
