RFR 8135248: Add utility methods to check indexes and ranges

[Peter Levart]

On 09/21/2015 05:46 PM, Paul Sandoz wrote:
> On 21 Sep 2015, at 16:45, Remi Forax <forax at univ-mlv.fr> wrote:
>
>> I agree with Stephen.
>>
>> Calling the function interface with the name ...Exception seems very wrong to me.
>>
> Agreed, need to think of a better name. One solution is to remove it all together :-) see below.
>
>
>> The convention of ArrayIOOBE or StringIOOBE is to just report the bad index with no further info,
>> currently with your code it's not possible to write
>>   checkIndex(index, ArrayIndexOutOuBoundException::new).
>>
>> so the functional interface for checkIndex should be int -> Object or long -> Object if you change ArrayIOOBE and StringIOOBE to store a long.
>> This functional Interface already exists under the name java.util.function.LongFunction.
>>
> The friction here is trying to cater for the existing use-cases in the JDK, after a cursory 5 minute search you will find many conventions :-)
>
>  From the use-cases i have looked at so far I believe it’s possible to support nearly all with BiFunction<Integer, Integer, RuntimeException> (i started out with that in mind), in some cases a process of elimination can be used for reporting. Other use-cases could be supported with capture.
>
> There is a use-case in AbstractStringBuilder that requires all three values, that is the only one i have found so far in the JDK. I would be interested to know if there are others and also if people are doing that in their own code too.
>
> I would be happy to sacrifice the use-case in AbstractStringBuilder for using BiFunction<Integer, Integer, RuntimeException>, and add appropriate constructors or factory methods on the common exception types for method ref usage.
>
> Paul.

Don't forget that AbstractStringBuilder is used in String concatenation 
which might be used very early in the life of VM and that lambdas need 
invokedynamic which initializes java.lang.invoke infrastructure which 
doesn't work currently if it happens before System class loader is 
initialized... (same chicken-egg issues as with string concatenation JEP 
by Alexey Shipilev - they can be solved though, but it would be easier 
to not need lambdas if possible. They don't make code look any nicer in 
these cases anyway).

Regards, Peter

>
>> For the two other methods that checks several index, again the convention is to report the bad index / size, so a LongFunction is enough too,
>> yes, it means that you can not check several index at once with things like (a < 0) | (b < 0) but because the semantics you propose is different
>> from what is usually done, you will not be alble to use those methods inside the JDK without introducing incompatibilities.
>>
>> cheers,
>> Rémi