java.nio.channels.MembershipKey API

[Alan Bateman]

David M. Lloyd wrote:
> :
> Well, that wasn't my point.  I don't think anyone would reasonably 
> expect a multicast membership key to outlive the channel.  My point is 
> that, given that there's a standard resource cleanup I/O interface 
> (Closeable), and that drop() conforms to it exactly apart from the 
> name, why not use it?
I appreciate this wasn't your point but your comment helped to highlight 
that an explicit statement to that effect was missing.

I agree that implementing Closeable to work with resource clean-up 
facilities is good (we need to retrofit Selector implement it, as you 
pointed out a few months ago).  However, I don't see a big need for 
classes such as FileLock, SelectionKey, and MembershipKey to implement 
it. These are tokens rather than data sources or destinations. I would 
expect the channel to be registered with the clean-up facility; when its 
close method is invoked, then it releases all resources and invalidates 
all the associated token objects.

-Alan.