Addition to Comparable interface

[Roy van Rijn]

Ah yes, much better, thanks!

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:40 PM, Joseph D. Darcy <Joe.Darcy at sun.com> wrote:
> Mark Thornton wrote:
>>
>> Roy van Rijn wrote:
>>
>>>>>
>>>>> FEATURE SUMMARY:
>>>>>
>>>>> The return value of the Comparable interfae could be made a lot
>>>>> clearer if it would have the following static variables:
>>>>>   public static int BEFORE = -1;
>>>>>   public static int EQUAL = 0;
>>>>>   public static int AFTER = 1;
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This might give the impression that the only values returned by
>>>> compareTo
>>>> are -1, 0, 1 which is certainly not true. The interface only requires
>>>> that
>>>> the sign of the returned value reflect the ordering.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> That might be a problem indeed, but the javadoc should still indicate
>>> its possible to use any positive and negative integer value.
>>>
>>> The problem I've seen a lot is the following, even in large corporate
>>> programs, when people compare integers like this:
>>>
>>
>> As Reinier points out this is the wrong list for this proposal.
>> However a better solution might be to add Integer.compare(int,int) and
>> Long.compare(int, int) methods, and encourage people to use tham inside of
>> writing the comparison themselves.
>>
>> Mark Thornton
>>
>>
>
> Yes; as noted the request is off-topic for Project Coin since it is a pure
> libraries change.
>
> I agree a set of two-argument int and long (and float and double ...)
> compare methods on primitive types would be a fine addition to the platform
> libraries in JDK 7:
>
> 6582946 Add suite of compare(T, T) methods for ints, longs etc
> http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=6582946
>
> -Joe
>
>