On 2/16/18, 5:13 PM, Stuart Marks wrote:
Let me put in an argument for handling code points:
3. public static String repeat(final int codepoint, final int count)
Most of the String and Character API handles code points on an equal
footing with chars. I think this is important, as over time Unicode is
continuing to add supplementary characters -- those that can't be
represented in a Java char value. Examples abound of how such
characters are mishandled. Therefore, I believe Java APIs should have
full support for code points.
This is a small thing, and some might consider it a rare case -- how
often does one need to repeat something like an emoji? The issue
however isn't that particular use case. Instead what's required is the
ability to handle *any Unicode character* uniformly, regardless of
whether or not it's a supplementary character. The way to do that is
to deal with code points, so any Java API that deals with character
data must also handle code points.
If we were to add just one method:
1. public String repeat(final int count)
the workaround is to take the character, turn it into a string, and
call the repeat() method on it. For a 'char' value, this isn't too
bad, but I'd argue it isn't pretty either:
Character.toString(charVal).repeat(n)
How about
public static repeat(int count, char... chars)?
String.repeat(100, '*');
String.repeat(100, 'x', 'y');
and it should not be too bad and kinda consistent to have
String.repeat(n, Character.toChars(0x12345));
-sherman
