RFR: 8197594 - String and character repeat

[Brian Goetz]

I really can’t see the value of more than one method. If we need other forms they should be for constructing strings not repeating strings.  

Sent from my MacBook Wheel

> On Feb 16, 2018, at 6:12 PM, Xueming Shen <xueming.shen at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 2/16/18, 5:13 PM, Stuart Marks wrote:
>> Let me put in an argument for handling code points:
>> 
>>> 3. public static String repeat(final int codepoint, final int count)
>> 
>> Most of the String and Character API handles code points on an equal footing with chars. I think this is important, as over time Unicode is continuing to add supplementary characters -- those that can't be represented in a Java char value. Examples abound of how such characters are mishandled. Therefore, I believe Java APIs should have full support for code points.
>> 
>> This is a small thing, and some might consider it a rare case -- how often does one need to repeat something like an emoji? The issue however isn't that particular use case. Instead what's required is the ability to handle *any Unicode character* uniformly, regardless of whether or not it's a supplementary character. The way to do that is to deal with code points, so any Java API that deals with character data must also handle code points.
>> 
>> If we were to add just one method:
>> 
>>> 1. public String repeat(final int count)
>> 
>> the workaround is to take the character, turn it into a string, and call the repeat() method on it. For a 'char' value, this isn't too bad, but I'd argue it isn't pretty either:
>> 
>>    Character.toString(charVal).repeat(n)
> 
> How about
> 
> public static repeat(int count, char... chars)?
> 
> String.repeat(100, '*');
> String.repeat(100, 'x', 'y');
> 
> and it should not be too bad and kinda consistent to have
> 
> String.repeat(n,  Character.toChars(0x12345));
> 
> -sherman