Caching behaviour of InetAddress

[Andreas Plesner Jacobsen]

Alan Bateman wrote:

Alan,

> The specification could be improved but changing InetAddress.getByName 
> to return a random address is a significant change that could break 
> existing applications. It might be better to define a new method, 
> perhaps "getAnyByName", that randomly chooses one of the cached 
> addresses for the host (or does a lookup if not in the cache). That 
> would be a convenience to applications to avoid needing to invoke 
> getAllByName and choose an address themselves.

I don't think it's a significant change, since that's how getByName() 
acts when the cache entries time out, so changing it would make it act a 
lot more consistently.

Actually, I think it's worth debating whether or not InetAddress should 
cache lookups at all, I think it's more fitting to delegate that to the 
underlying OS.

-- 
Andreas