Geir Magnusson Jr wrote:
Richard Liang wrote:
Geir Magnusson Jr wrote:
Tim Ellison wrote:
Yep, if the spec tells you what the format of the string should be then
follow it (since apps may be dependent upon it), otherwise I'd be
inclined to invent your own useful string representation.
This idea scares me. I think people do depend on toString() when
writing apps, and tend to shove that kind of thing to log files and such
on server apps. To have our outptut different from Sun's, BEA's, IBM's,
Apple's seens like we're asking for trouble.
Hello Geir,
IMHO, as long as the method does not give confusing message to
developers, we are not required to have the same behavior. You may want
to refer to the spec of java.lang.Object.toString:
...
In general, the toString method returns a string that "textually
represents" this object. The result should be a concise but informative
representation that is easy for **a person to read**.
...
Sure, but that doesn't mean that it would be reasonable to randomly
change the output of a given Class's toString() as long as it would be
easy for a person to read :)
I know that's not what you are advocating, and I certainly agree that no
one should depend on toString() output like that, but I also know that
in production systems *I* have done it, and I'm sure others have as well.
And there are some cases that we even cannot follow RI.
e.g.,
URLConnection conn = new URL("http://www.apache.org";).openConnection();
System.out.println(conn.toString());
The code above will print
"sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection:http://www.apache.org";
Any comments? Thanks a lot.
Well, we could actually print that if that was our impl of URLConnection
for HTTP, but still, I think
"org.apache.harmony.whatever.HttpURLConnection:http://www.apache.org";
would be more reasonable than
"Implementing Class : org.apache.harmony.whatever.HttpURLConnection,
Target URI : http://www.apache.org";
or something like that, even thought the second is perfectly good.
All I'm saying is that unless the output from the RI's toString() is
particularly brain-dead, it doesn't seem to be too much of a bother to
be similar.
Agree. And in fact, it's easier to have the same output as RI's if we
are allowed. :-) Could we think this rule also apply to the message when
an exception is thrown?
Any comments? Thanks a lot.
Best regards,
Richard
Just my $0.02
geir
Best regards,
Richard
geir
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Richard Liang
China Software Development Lab, IBM
