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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LANG-360?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#action_12538682
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jogi edited comment on LANG-360 at 10/29/07 11:54 PM:
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Yes, this behavior is in sync with the javadoc. That's where I found it first.
But that did not mean that it is a good behavior.
I like to vote against a second method with a default value. Who needs a
default value, when debugging an object? (If this bean is null, log another
one?) A method appendIdentityToStringNullSave would be better, but a little
ugly.
>> Almost all of Commons Lang behavior returns null where possible for a null
>> source parameter. <<
Hm, I don't think so. And evan if it would be: Returning null, if the
StringBuffer is null could be argued, but returning null if the second value is
null is definitly a bad behavior. Remember this:
appendIdentityToString(new StringBuffer(), null)
Would you expect this to return null? But this does not return null:
appendIdentityToString(null, new Object())
Really confusing.
was (Author: jogi):
Yes, this behavior is in sync with the javadoc. That's where I found it
first. But that did not mean that it is a good behavior.
I like to vote against a second method with a default value. Who needs a
default value, when debugging an object? (If this bean is null, log another
one?) A method appendIdentityToStringNullSave would be better, but a little
ugly.
>> Almost all of Commons Lang behavior returns null where possible for a null
>> source parameter. <<
Hm, I don't think so. And evan if it would be: Returning null, if the
StringBuffer is null could be argued, but returning null if the second value is
null is definitly a bad behavior. Remember this: appendIdentityToString(new
StringBuffer(), null) Would you expect this to return null? But this does not
return null: appendIdentityToString(null, new Object()) Really confusing.
> Why does appendIdentityToString return null?
> --------------------------------------------
>
> Key: LANG-360
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LANG-360
> Project: Commons Lang
> Issue Type: Bug
> Reporter: Jörg Gottschling
> Fix For: 2.4
>
>
> ObjectUtils is designed to handle null imputs gracefully. But
> ObjectUtils.appendIdentityToString does not. It returns null unnessecary if
> you pass null als second parameter (the object to get the identity from). For
> example appendIdentityToString(new StringBuffer(), null) will return null!
> Which is an uncommen behaviour. Think about code like this:
> ObjectUtils.appendIdentityToString(buffer, param1)
> .appendIdentityToString(buffer, param2)
> .appendIdentityToString(buffer, param3);
> This will cause an NPE if param1 or param2 ist null. There may be other code
> where a NPE will not happen, but the code is used for debugging and there
> will be an unexpected or wrong output.
> So you shoul return the StringBuffer which is passed in or a new one if null.
> The harder question is what to do with the object. I think we should append
> "null" to the StringBuffer, because this is what I would expect and what the
> passed reference is.
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