Extending Collector to handle a post-transform

[Remi Forax]

On 06/12/2013 12:47 AM, Brian Goetz wrote:
> You're going to need to be more detailed about what you mean by "bad". 
> What options are you talking about?
>
> Here's how it will be used:
>
>   stream.collect(Collectors.toList())
>
> See, no question marks.

if it compiles, otherwise, the compiler will list all type parameters 
that doesn't work,
so the more you add type parameter, the less the error message are readable.

Still don't get why you can not do:
interface SimpleCollector<T, R> extends Collector<T, R, R> {
   ...
}

<R> R collect(SimpleCollector<? super T, R> collector);

>
> Here's what Collect looks like:
>
>     <R, I> R collect(Collector<? super T, I, R> collector);
>
> Again, no question marks there either.  (Well, there is one, but we're 
> already comfortable with that one -- or at least we'd better be.)  The 
> only place they show up is in the return type of the canned collectors.

Writing a method that takes a Collector<String,?,List<String>> as 
parameter suppose that you have understood how the capture of wildcard 
works.

>
> If you know what the type parameters mean, what Collector<T, ?, R> 
> says is "A Collector that accepts input elements of type T, with some 
> internal but uncommitted intermediate representation, and a final 
> result type of R."  This really isn't so mysterious. Theoretically we 
> could commit to the internal type for toList:
>
>   Collector<T, List<T>, List<T>> toList() {...}
>
> but for some Collectors, it would be a bug to commit to the type. For 
> example, average could be a
>
>   Collector<T, long[], Long>
>
> but we'd be foolish to constrain ourselves to this intermediate 
> representation when doing so does not benefit the user at all. (The 
> reason we don't have average now is that we can't write it at all 
> without the post-transform.)

Rémi

>
>
>
>
> On 6/11/2013 6:34 PM, Joe Bowbeer wrote:
>> This toList looks bad to me. What's in the javadoc is what the IDE
>> presents (right?), and I'm not very optimistic about the ? options it
>> suggests. I'll try everything first.
>>
>> On Jun 11, 2013 3:27 PM, "Brian Goetz" <brian.goetz at oracle.com
>> <mailto:brian.goetz at oracle.com>> wrote:
>>
>>         OK, scratch that. Here's a different approach:
>>
>>
>>         For example,
>>
>>         /** Passed to Stream methods by client code */
>>         public interface Collector<T, R> {
>>               <X> Tuple<T, X, R> asTuple();
>>
>>               /** Called on by Stream implementations to perform 
>> collection
>>         process */
>>               interface Tuple<T, X, R> {
>>                   Supplier<X> resultSupplier();
>>                   BiFunction<X, T, X> accumulator();
>>                   BinaryOperator<X> combiner();
>>                   Function<X, R> transformer();
>>                   Set<Characteristics> characteristics();
>>               }
>>         }
>>
>>
>>     Right, that's one of the forms of "move the ugly elsewhere."
>>
>>     But really, do you find this:
>>
>>          public static <T>
>>          Collector<T, ?, List<T>> toList() { ... }
>>
>>     all that offensive?  If you found that in the javadoc, would it
>>     really make you wonder what that ? was all about?  Because this is
>>     really as bad as it gets.
>>