Why does CharSequence not have String getChars(int srcBegin, int srcEnd, char[] dst, int dstBegin)

[David M. Lloyd]

One could always go the awt route:

public interface CharSequence2 extends CharSequence {
     ...new methods here...
}

then change things to implement CharSequence2 instead, using covariance as 
appropriate (thus at least somewhat avoiding the casting problem).  At 
least then the program would fail early :-)

- DML

On 10/17/2008 04:54 PM, Brian Duff wrote:
> This doesn't just introduce a source incompatibility (requiring code to 
> be recompiled), it also introduces a binary incompatibility. If any 
> object receives a CharSequence instance that happened to have been 
> compiled against an older version of the platform, it will have no way 
> of knowing that this method does not exist on the object.
> 
> Java hasn't (to my knowledge) ever broken compatibility with an 
> interface in the platform API before. I consider that a great strength 
> of the platform.
> 
> Brian
> 
> On Oct 17, 2008, at 13:26, "Paulo Levi" <i30817 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Can't be changed? No user of the api is currently using getChars on a
>> Charsequence (because it doesn't exist!)
>>
>> If you're talking about other implementers of Charsequence than the
>> jdk, well, i don't see why do we have to suffer ignominious interface
>> incompleteness just because someone doesn't want to compile the code
>> ever again.
>>
>> And couldn't it be made to work anyway?