RFR: 8305734: BitSet.get(int, int) always returns the empty BitSet when the Integer.MAX VALUE is set

[Stuart Marks]

On Fri, 7 Apr 2023 12:22:03 GMT, Andy-Tatman <duke at openjdk.org> wrote:

> See https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug?bug_id=8305734

The `size()` call is rather odd, as it's mainly about the implementation and is not considered part of the actual value of the BitSet. I note that `equals()` is specified not to include the size.  BitSet is a very old API, dating back to 1.0, so perhaps it was felt that implementation-level information would be important to users, or perhaps the notion of keeping implementation details out of the APIs hadn't been fully developed yet. (There are other 1.0-era APIs that have similar characteristics.) Note that the specs do say that the size can change with the implementation, so there's some flexibility here. That said, it's not clear to me how a user of BitSet can actually use `size()` effectively.

A comprehensive fix to the BitSet implementation and specs should probably address the proper return value of `size()`, but I think it can considered somewhat independently of other methods, which have thorny semantic issues regarding what happens at MAX_VALUE.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/13388#issuecomment-1520878988