Re: Number.parse( String s )

From:
"Oliver Wong" <owong@castortech.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Wed, 10 Jan 2007 10:56:31 -0500
Message-ID:
<iu8ph.90217$2S6.1185627@wagner.videotron.net>
"Christopher Benson-Manica" <ataru@ukato.freeshell.org> wrote in message
news:eo2uec$flp$1@chessie.cirr.com...

Is there a good reason why Number does not declare an abstract method
parse() taking a string as a parameter?


    Perhaps because it's undesirable to force all subclasses of Number to
implement this method? AtomicInteger, for example, doesn't seem to have a
parse method.

 I want to create a generic
parsing class, with these methods as examples:

static int parseLong( Attributes attributes, String key ) {
 return parseNumber( attributes, key, -1L );
}

static int parseLong( Attributes attributes, String key, Long def ) {
 return parseNumber( attributes, key, def );
}

parseNumber ought to be able to be defined as

static <T extends Number> T parseNumber(Attributes attributes, String key,
T def ) {
 final String value = attributes.getValue( key );
 if( value == null ) {
   return def;
 }
 return (T)defVal.getClass().parse( value ); // Unchecked cast, but safe
}

, but instead there's no choice (that I can see) but to use reflection:

static <T extends Number> T parseNumber(Attributes attributes, String key,
T def ) {
 final String value = attributes.getValue( key );
 if( value == null ) {
   return def;
 }
 try {
   return
(T)defVal.getClass().getConstructor(String.class).newInstance(value);
 }
 catch( Exception e ) { // Won't throw anything but NumberFormatException
   return def;
 }
}


    How about using Map<CaseInsensitiveString,Number> instead of Attribute?
[*]

    - Oliver

*: Where CaseInsensitiveString is a wrapper class which wraps String and
overrides equals and hashcode. You'll need to write it if you want the
case-insensitive key behaviour to be preserved from Attribute.

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