8207690: Parsing API for classpath and similar path strings

[Stephen Colebourne]

On Tue, 11 Sep 2018 at 10:25, Alan Bateman <Alan.Bateman at oracle.com> wrote:
> On 10/09/2018 21:55, Roger Riggs wrote:
> > Nope! there's quoting on Windows that gets short changed with that
> > work around.
> >
> > Other opinions?, Suggestions?
> One suggestion is reduce this down to one method that returns a stream
> rather than a collection. It could work lazily if you want. Something like:
>
>    Stream<String> splitSearchPath(String input)
>
> is a lot more flexible (in my view) and the places where we use Path
> objects can use .map(Path::of).

This is a broader question for new methods in the JDK, not just this
one. I don't think anyone has come up with a "style guide" for when to
use Stream returning as opposed to list-returning methods.

What I can say is that I think List is the better fit here, because:
- the result is not large
- the result may well be stored somewhere (method should guarantee
result is immutable)
- a List is simpler conceptually than Stream as a result type (eg.
serial vs parallel)

Personally, I only tend to return Stream if I the particular method is
returning a very large data set.

Stephen