Proposal: JDK-8231640 - (prop) Canonical property storage

[Daniel Fuchs]

Hi,

Not all properties file might benefit from being sorted in key ordering.

Think for instance about the logging.properties file - where you would
certainly want to keep the original ordering.

That said - we rarely store() a logging properties file, and if
we stored it, key might appear in random order anyway (due to
HashMap hashing) - so maybe that's OK after all...

As long as the build doesn't fiddle with these... :-)

cheers,

-- daniel

On 25/08/2021 15:06, Roger Riggs wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> For the occasional human reader of a property file, a deterministic 
> order would make them
> easier to use as well.  The natural sort order of the keys as String 
> would be suitable.
> 
> I'd support changing the order written without changing the API. Load 
> and other readers
> of property files have no expectation of an order; there is almost no 
> compatibility risk.
> 
> Providing an alternate timestamp (or no timestamp) would need a new method.
> An overload of store(...) would be consistent with current uses.
> To produce a compatible format, including a timezone, it would need to 
> be either
> java.util.Date or java.time.ZonedDateTime.
> 
> (I'm not a fan of system properties that change API behavior).
> 
> Regards, Roger
> 
>