Noel J. Bergman wrote:
Ok, I just meant that you can't reference the implementation if we're talking interfaces.If the question is whether the interface should change, there ought to be reasons. So far, I have not seen any was my point.
Yes, this is my point... we should not leave it up to the implementation as to whether it is ordered or not.I understand, and I am all for meaningful contracts. My point is that a Java Collection is not unordered. It can be either ordered or unordered, based upon the implementation class.
Agreed, a Collection is ordered or unordered. And a List is, "An ordered collection (also known as a sequence)" as you quoted from the javadocs. Since the MX record query produce an ordered set of IP addresses, I'm saying the interface should return an ordered collection.
Backwards trasversal is a consequence of having order. Mutators also are a consequence of order. Index operations are a consequence of having order while allowing duplicates.The ListIterator also adds backwards traversal, list mutators, and index operations.
The only other ordered collections I know of aside from List is the SortedSet. If we can determine whether we need to allow duplicates, we can choose one or the other. I'm not looking to enable methods that shouldn't be allowed on this result, but for the same reason that we return a Collection instead of an Object, if we have certain characteristics that we know should be present in the result, we should pick the appropriate interface.None of these List behaviors are necessary parts of the client contract we need to expose as far as I can see. All that we require is that the elements be ordered according to our application (RFC) defined scheme. But by changing the interface to a List, we preclude the ability to use any other type of ordered collection.
I hope I am clearer now.
Yes, and I hope I am as well.
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