Patch for Enhancement Bug # 6313849 and 417591

[Michael McMahon]

Andreas Schaefer wrote:
> Michael McMahon wrote:
>> Christopher Hegarty - Sun Microsystems Ireland wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Andreas Schaefer wrote:
>>>  > Well, the reason I did make it abstract is the fact that I did 
>>> want to
>>>> avoid someone getting away with an empty implementation. This is only
>>>> causing a problem if someone is compiling its code for 1.7 and so 
>>>> he/she
>>>> just needs to implement it. Compiling means that he/she has the 
>>>> code and
>>>> so this is pretty easy fix. Providing an empty implementation is more
>>>> costly that adding an implementation.
>>>
>>> While breaking source compatibility in a major release ( and jdk 7 
>>> is a major release ) is acceptable, I think there should be a good 
>>> reason to do so, and I do not believe that there is one in this case.
>>>
>> This case is probably in a grey area. Normally, the justification has 
>> to be very strong, but
>> URLConnection and its sub-classes would mostly be considered as part 
>> of the platform rather
>> than as part of applications. In other words, (as Andy said) there 
>> probably aren't that many
>> implementations out there. So long as we maintain binary 
>> compatibility for existing applications
>> using third party URLConnections (assuming there are some) then we 
>> should be ok.
>>
>> I think I prefer the method name close() to disconnect() since it 
>> seems to be closer to
>> what the bug report is asking for. HttpURLConnection.disconnect() is 
>> slightly different
>> in meaning.
>>
>> - Michael.
> My idea is that connect() / disconnect() are orthogonal methods 
> meaning that after a disconnect() one can reopen the Connection by 
> issuing another connect() call. Calling it close() would break that 
> linguistically but with the proper documentation it should be fine.
>
> -Andy
One other thing, URLConnections can't be reused. I imagine it could lead 
to all kinds
of security issues if we tried to support that. They are basically 
immutable in terms
of the resource that is accessed. I don't think this RFE really needs 
that. What do you think?

- Michael.