Java 14 - Change in InetSocketAddress.toString() behaviour seems to be causing issues

[Julia Boes]

Hi Jaikiran,

>>> By the way, keeping aside the breaking nature of this change, the 
>>> current javadoc, I think doesn't reflect what the current 
>>> implementation returns for unresolved addresses. The javadoc states:
>>>
>>> "If the address is unresolved, |<unresolved>| is displayed in place 
>>> of the address literal."
>>>
>>> Note, the "in place of the address literal" part. However, in the 
>>> current implementation[6], it returns something like - 
>>> "localhost/<unresolved>:2182". So it doesn't just display the 
>>> "<unresolved>" literal in the address part but suffixes it to the 
>>> address part. Should that be clarified?
>>>
>> The InetSocketAddress string representation defers, partly, to 
>> InetAddress::toString, which specifies the “hostname / literal IP 
>> address” form. It is this address literal that is replaced with 
>> “<unresolved>”. If this is not clear from this spec, then it can be 
>> clarified.
>>
> Now that you explained it to me, I see what you mean and what that 
> javadoc means. I hadn't paid attention to the "This String is 
> constructed by calling toString() on the InetAddress and concatenating 
> the port number (with a colon)". Looking at the javadoc on 
> InetAddress.toString(), it does state the returned string to be of the 
> form "hostname/literal IP address" (example: 
> google.com/172.217.160.142). So when it says that "<unresolved> is 
> displayed in place of the address literal", it actually is talking 
> about the part that follows the "/" character in the output returned 
> by the InetAddress.toString().
>
> I'll be honest - I didn't even know that up until this release, the 
> output of this API was something like google.com/172.217.160.142:80. I 
> had it in my mind that the output was google.com:80. That's why when 
> the new javadoc said "in place of the address literal", I thought it 
> was talking about replacing "google.com" with "<unresolved>"
>
> I don't know if it's just me who couldn't fully understand it until 
> this was explained. For me, a {@link InetSocket.toString()} in the 
> javadoc and a couple of example representations of what the output of 
> toString() would look like would have made it easier. But I do 
> understand that the javadoc may not be the right place for such level 
> of details.
>
Based on the feedback, we updated the related release note to better 
explain "literal IP address" and to include a pointer to 
InetSocketAddress::getHostString.

https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/14all-relnotes-5809668.html#JDK-8225499

Cheers,

Julia


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