Re: How to sort a Set?
Roedy Green wrote:
On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:35:08 -0700, Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org>
wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :
Do you think Arrays should be split in to ArraysOfObject etc.? There are
methods in Arrays that cannot be applied to every array.
How is that different from having methods in Collections that cannot be
applied to every object whose class in the collection hierarchy?
the methods in Array are all at least conceptually applicable to
arrays.
The sort and binarySearch methods are not even conceptually applicable
to Collections. I have tripped over that many times. Collections
don't have an order to sort.
The chances of Java changing to accomodate your particular complaint in this
matter are negligible.
There are often posts of the nature of, "I don't like <some feature of Java>.
It shouldn't be like that!" Clearly the language cannot accomodate every
single such complaint. The triage involved would most likely come down hard
against arbitrary changes to current viable solutions with perfectly workable
semantics. If they were going to do something to "fix" so well-established
and widely-used a class as Collections, they'd be better served fixing the
problems with other classes, say, java.util.Date. Only that ain't gonna
happen either.
Ultimately you're just peeved at the name of the class. If they'd called it
java.util.MiscUtils you'd have no case instead of a flimsy one. I bet they
would have argued against having multiple utility classes for every picayune
distinction - that'd be the source of whining from some other camp.
I guess we just have to abandon the "I wanna Lists class" plaint and
concentrate on suggestions that help us use the language as it actually is, in
reality, usefully today, or change it in important and actually beneficial
ways instead of just petty rearrangements of the deck chairs.
--
Lew