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Elliotte Rusty Harold edited comment on IO-813 at 10/1/23 9:30 PM: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Throwing an exception is not a problem. Throwing an exception from Comparable.compareTo is a big problem, and throwing one not allowed by the contract of Comparable.compareTo is a huge problem. When LastModifiedFileComparator is used in Collections.sort or equivalent it can leave objects in inconsistent states. Comparable should not be used in scenarios where I/O errors are a possibility. You need something that's designed to include the possibility of an I/O error. Converting to a runtime exception does not solve the problem. It simply pretends the problem won't happen. was (Author: elharo): Throwing an exception is not a problem. Throwing an exception from Comparable.compareTo is a big problem, and throwing one not allowed by the contract of Comparable.compareTo is a huge problem. When LastModifiedFileComparator is used in Collections.sort or equivalent it can leave objects in inconsistent states. Comparable should not be used in scenarios where I/O errors are a possibility. You need something that's planned around the possibility if an I/O error. Converting to a runtime exception does not solve the problem. It simply pretends the problem won't happen. > LastModifiedFileComparator should not throw exceptions, period > -------------------------------------------------------------- > > Key: IO-813 > URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/IO-813 > Project: Commons IO > Issue Type: Bug > Reporter: Elliotte Rusty Harold > Priority: Major > > LastModifiedFileComparator is likely broken by design since it can > unexpectedly throw UncheckedIOException. This violates the contract of > Comparable.compareTo which is not documented to throw that exception. > I analyzed almost this exact case in detail here: > https://medium.com/@elharo/when-you-cant-throw-an-exception-b9f9b0db9ba4 > I'm not sure how to fix this now, but I'm, tempted to simply deprecate this > entire class. -- This message was sent by Atlassian Jira (v8.20.10#820010)