RFR: 8079136: Accessing a nested sublist leads to StackOverflowError

[Doug Lea]

On 05/08/2015 02:17 PM, Ivan Gerasimov wrote:

>> The spec says "The returned list is backed by this list"
>> and "The subclass's set(int, E), get(int), add(int, E), remove(int),
>> addAll(int, Collection) and removeRange(int, int) methods all delegate to the
>> corresponding methods on the backing abstract list".
>>
>> It is possible that no differences could be detected, but it would take
>> some effort to prove.
>>
>
> Hm.  Let me try.
>
> We have two options:
> 1) Sublist of an arbitrary AbstractList, which is not SubList itself.
> 2) Sublist of another SubList.

Plus:

3) An arbitrary wrapping of SubList, as seen for example in Collections
utilities like synchronizedList:
         public List<E> subList(int fromIndex, int toIndex) {
             synchronized (mutex) {
                 return new SynchronizedList<>(list.subList(fromIndex, toIndex),
                                             mutex);
             }
         }

... which can define methods relying on the specified full cascade.

(I'm not trying to be hostile about this; just trying to avoid the
usual problems seen when trying to change many Java 1.0-1.2 era
classes that over-specified behavior. Luckily, people
have learned since then not to do this so much.)

-Doug