j.u.Objects follow-up: variations on Object -> String methods (original) (raw)
Joseph D. Darcy Joe.Darcy at Sun.COM
Thu Oct 8 19:12:11 UTC 2009
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Hello.
During the vigorous discussion of what Objects.toString(Object) should be defined to do, a number of alternatives were suggested:
public static toString(Object a, String default) // return default if (a == null) else a.toString() public static toDefaultString(Object a) // return the string Object.toString returns if not overriden, what about null? public static toDebugString(Object a) // reflectively return an informative representation of the argument
I can accept the utility of toString(Object a, String default) and will include it in the next round of j.u.Objects updates.
The functionality of toDefaultString is included in Apache commons under
the name of "identityToString," returning null for a null argument.
From a quick Google code search, this methods doesn't seem to be widely
called and I'm not yet convinced it's worthwhile to add this method to
Objects.
I think I could be convinced that a reflection-based toDebugString was useful enough to include in the platform. However, someone would have to contribute the specification and a robust implementation.
-Joe
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