Proposal: Sameness operators

[Mark Thornton]

Tom Hawtin wrote:
> Reinier Zwitserloot wrote:
>   
>> Why can't we use compareTo and equals?
>>     
>
>   * compareTo may well be unreasonably inefficient.
>   * equals handles nulls (asymmetrically), compareTo does not
>   * equals does test-and-cast (event for generic types - urgh), 
> compareTo uses generics
>   * equals does not throw ClassCastException, compareTo does (but 
> probably shouldn't with generics)
>
> Therefore, new methods please. I'm sure you are aware the whole subject 
> of operator overloading in general is a minefield.
>   
a.compareTo(b) == 0 and a.equals(b) are not always the same, sometimes 
for very good reasons. I seem to remember that there is at least one 
such class in the Java platform.

Mark Thornton