What methods should go into a java.util.Objects class in JDK 7?

Andrew John Hughes gnu_andrew at member.fsf.org
Wed Sep 9 21:22:04 UTC 2009


2009/9/9 Joe Darcy <Joe.Darcy at sun.com>:
> Hello.
>
> For JDK 7, I think it is high-time the platform included a class like
> java.util.Objects to hold commonly-written utility methods.  For example, a
> two-argument static equals method that returned true if both arguments are
> null, returns false is one argument is null, and otherwise returns the
> result of calling arg1.equals(arg2)  (6797535 "Add shared two argument
> static equals method to the platform").
>
> A static hashCode method returning 0 for null and the value of
> arg.hashCode() has also been suggested.
>
> A set of
>
>   static int compareTo(int, int)
>   static int compareTo(long, long)
>   ....
>
> methods probably belongs somewhere in the platform too.
>
> What other utility methods would have broad enough use and applicability to
> go into a common java.util class?
>
> -Joe
>

Given you've listed utility methods for two Object methods, equals and
hashCode, toString seems an obvious one to handle as well:

public static String toString(Object o)
  throws IllegalAccessException
{
  Class<?> c = o.getClass();
  StringBuilder b = new StringBuilder(c.getName());
  b.append("[");
  for (Field f : c.getDeclaredFields())
  {
    f.setAccessible(true);
    b.append(f.getName() + "=" + f.get());
    b.append(",");
  }
  b.replace(b.length() - 1, b.length(), "]");
  return b.toString();
}

Maybe there's also a useful utility implementation of clone too, but I
can't think of one offhand.
-- 
Andrew :-)

Free Java Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

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