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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COLLECTIONS-473?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13686497#comment-13686497
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Thomas Neidhart commented on COLLECTIONS-473:
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Subclasses do override it to return the actual collection type they are
decorating, look at AbstractBagDecorator for example, it returns a Bag instead
of a Collection. Otherwise you would have to cast every result of decorated().
Also I do not think this classifies as a bug, the purpose of the abstract
classes is to simplify the implementation of various decorators and not to
safe-guard for anything another developer could do with them. In fact somebody
could also alter the fields via reflection.
> AbstractCollectionDecorator.decorated() should not be used internally
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: COLLECTIONS-473
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COLLECTIONS-473
> Project: Commons Collections
> Issue Type: Bug
> Reporter: Sebb
>
> AbstractCollectionDecorator.decorated() is used internally to access the
> collection.
> However, the method is not final, so subclasses could override it.
> Yet the field is also exposed (protected).
> This is inconsistent.
> Is there any use-case for overriding the collection to use a different one?
> If so, having direct access as well is likely to cause problems.
> I think it would be better to use the field directly internally.
> The class Javadoc says the calls are forwarded to the underlying collection,
> but that is not strictly true if decorated() is overridden.
> If it is intended to allow this to be overridden, then the field needs to be
> protected against arbitrary read/write access.
> The field should probably be made private with a setter for use by
> deserialization only.
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