RFR: 8356995: Provide default methods min(T, T) and max(T, T) in Comparator interface [v7]

[Stuart Marks]

On Sun, 3 Aug 2025 13:42:41 GMT, Tagir F. Valeev <tvaleev at openjdk.org> wrote:

>> Implementation of Comparator.min and Comparator.max methods. Preliminary discussion is in this thread:
>> https://mail.openjdk.org/pipermail/core-libs-dev/2025-May/145638.html
>> The specification is mostly composed of Math.min/max and Collections.min/max specifications. 
>> 
>> The methods are quite trivial, so I don't think we need more extensive testing (e.g., using different comparators). But if you have ideas of new useful tests, I'll gladly add them.
>> 
>> I'm not sure whether we should specify exactly the behavior in case if the comparator returns 0. I feel that it could be a useful invariant that `Comparator.min(a, b)` and `Comparator.max(a, b)` always return different argument, partitioning the set of {a, b} objects (even if they are equal). But I'm open to suggestions here.
>
> Tagir F. Valeev has updated the pull request incrementally with one additional commit since the last revision:
> 
>   Add @implSpec

Overall, looks good, and thanks for persevering through all the nitpicky comments. But the high quality of the result justifies the effort.

A couple items of commentary, but nothing actionable.

* I note that the `@param` and `@return` clauses end in periods. This isn't the typical javadoc style that I'm familiar with. However, I note that most of the rest of this file is styled this way, so the rule about conforming to the prevailing local style applies.

* Although `<i>` is no longer used here, there doesn't seem to be a clear preference about the use of `<i>` vs `<em>` markup in javadoc text. In the `java.base` module the ratio is about 3,000 to 2,000 uses, respectively. The `<i>` markup has a clear but not overwhelming majority. On the other hand, this feels like a 1990s HTML argument, and maybe we just don't care.

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Marked as reviewed by smarks (Reviewer).

PR Review: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/25297#pullrequestreview-3242256168