JDK 9 RFR of 8067669: Documentation for methods in Number incomplete regarding too large values.

[Brian Burkhalter]

On Jan 7, 2015, at 12:08 AM, Andreas Lundblad <andreas.lundblad at oracle.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 05, 2015 at 05:43:26PM -0800, Joseph D. Darcy wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> Getting back to this issue in the new year, taking a closer look at
>> the existing class-level documentation, I don't really see a
>> compelling case for an edit this large.
>> 
>> I for one would be content if the bug were closed as "not an issue."
>> 
>> HTH,
>> 
>> -Joe
> 
> 
> I originally brought this up when I was trying to create a Comparator<Number>. In my use case I was fine with rounding and truncation, so I thougth I could safely use longValue. I was then surprised when I discovered that the method could basically return arbitrary long values.

With this in mind, perhaps simply an additional sentence in the class-level documentation would be in order, so to speak (insert as penultimate sentence):

“In particular, conversions may not preserve the mathematical ordering of the numeric values represented by Number instances."

Brian