RFR - 6480539: BigDecimal.stripTrailingZeros() should specify no-op on zero BigDecimals

[Joseph Darcy]

On 2/4/2013 1:36 PM, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> On 4 February 2013 19:31, Joe Darcy <joe.darcy at oracle.com> wrote:
>> The stripTrailingZeros method has acted in this surprising way since the
>> IBM-led JSR 13 was integrated into the platform back in JDK 5, which shipped
>> in 2004.
>>
>> This situation is analogous to when the specification and behavior disagree.
>> Our general policy to resolve such cases when evolving the JDK is:
>>
>> "..., there are times in evolving the JDK when differences are found between
>> the specified behavior and the actual behavior (for example 4707389,
>> 6365176). The two basic approaches to fixing these bugs are to change the
>> implementation to match the specified behavior or to change the
>> specification (in a platform release) to match the implementation's (perhaps
>> long-standing) behavior; often the latter option is chosen since it has a
>> lower de facto impact on behavioral compatibility."
>> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~darcy/OpenJdkDevGuide/OpenJdkDevelopersGuide.v0.777.html
>>
>> If this issue were being addressed before JDK 5 shipped or even during JDK
>> 6, I would support changing the behavior of stripTrailingZeros.  However,
>> for addressing this in JDK 8, I think it is more appropriate to keep the
>> behavior as-is and document this special case.
> I don't see what JDK 5 vs 6 vs 8 really has to do with it.

The longer a particular behavior has been in a shipped JDK release, the 
more likely it is various people have built code that depend on that 
behavior.

-Joe