Nulls

[Tim Peierls]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 1:19 PM, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> wrote:

>  4. Provide non-Optional-returning variants that take a non-null default
>>     return value to avoid object creation *in some cases*.
>>
>
> It's called: iterator().
>

For some things, yes, but in general, good luck explaining that. For
example, I bet more people would grok what's going on in this:

    T maxOr(T defval);
    ...
    Integer m = intStream.maxOr(Integer.MIN_VALUE);
    if (m == Integer.MIN_VALUE) {
        // empty, no max
    } else {
        // do something with m
    }

than in this:

    Iterator<T> max();
    ...
    Iterator<Integer> it = intStream.max();
    if (it.hasNext()) {
        // do something with it.next()
    } else {
        // empty, no max
    }

Actually, more obvious still would be to use Optional:

    Optional<Integer> m = intStream.max();
    if (m.isPresent()) {
        // do something with m.get()
    } else {
        // empty, no max
    }

I only bring up the others because so many people are worried that the
extra Optional object will never ever be optimized away and will slow
everything down.

--tim