RFR 7065380 : Allow Collections.sort to sort Collections.singletonList() result (original) (raw)

Colin Decker cgdecker at gmail.com
Thu Mar 1 21:29:05 UTC 2012

Doesn't this break the contract of the method? It specifies that it throws UnsupportedOperationException if the specified list's list-iterator does not support the set operation. Its Javadoc body also states that the list must be modifiable. (Though sort() already succeeds for an emptyList() despite it not supporting set.) It seems to me that this just hides programmer error. Anyone who passes an unmodifiable singleton list to sort() is treating it as a modifiable list in their code. Rather than succeeding despite that, I'd think it might be preferable for the call to fail so the programmer is alerted to that error in their assumptions so they can correct it before it bites them elsewhere.

-- Colin

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Mike Duigou <mike.duigou at oracle.com> wrote:

Hello all;

Currently Collections.sort() refuses to sort the lists which result from calling Collections.singletonList(). This makes some sense because the singleton lists are immutable but they are also alway sorted. This patch allows Collections.sort() to be used with empty and singleton lists of all types. A short circuit return is provided for lists of length 0 and 1 as they are already sorted. WEBREV @ http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~mduigou/7065380/0/webrev/ For the unit test ignore the diffs and view the "New" file--webrev doesn't understand "hg copy". Thanks, Mike

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