Anyone ever considered named tuples? (original) (raw)

Lawrence Kesteloot lk at teamten.com
Mon Mar 23 18:24:28 PDT 2009

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 3:28 PM, Paulo Levi <i30817 at gmail.com> wrote:

i'd like at least token self documenting semantic meaning as a library user - given by the library code. For instance: List<(String parentDirectory, String file)> getChildrenBindingToPosixMethod(File parent)

One of the advantages of using named types is that it gives you a place to write documentation. Where would you document the meaning of "parentDirectory" and "file"? Can either be null? Does parentDirectory include the final slash? I don't think your example above is very self-documenting when you consider the subtle questions a user might have about the list contents.

You could put it in the javadoc for getChildrenBindingToPosixMethod(), but surely several methods will eventually want to return or take that list or one of its elements, and you don't want to duplicate that documentation.

Giving that tuple a name gives you a place to document it, and it later encourages you to document it when the javadoc page is bare. What you call typesystem pollution, I call javadoc richness.

Lawrence

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