How's about Collections.getSafe(...) for Map, which wouldn't return null? (original) (raw)

David Holmes David.Holmes at Sun.COM
Mon Oct 26 16:07:14 UTC 2009


Hi Paul,

Paul Benedict wrote:

Since we're talking Map, I think a more utility would be gained by including putIfAbsent (see java.util.concurrent) because I see many lines of code that do that idiom all the time.

This idiom is especially prevalent when the value is itself a nested collection. Map<Object, List> map = ... List collection = map.get(key); if (collection == null) { collection = new LinkedList(); map.put(key, collection); } collection.add(value);

I suspect Remi referred to closures to have a way to let the user define what should happen in place of "new LinkedList" above.

The ConcurrentMap.putIfAbsent takes the potentially inserted object as a parameter and you have to take special steps to try to avoid unnecessary contruction (google Memoizer).

My main concern about non-concurrent putIfAbsent is that it is non-concurrent and I would not want users to get the two confused.

Just 2c.

David Holmes



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