API design

From:

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram)

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

24 Jun 2009 15:44:40 GMT

Message-ID:

<API-design-append-20090624173430@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>

  I assume that one wants to design an API with the option to
  open a FileOutputStream for /append mode/. There are several
  possibilities, and one can compare their readability,
  extendability (fitness for later API extensions), usability
  and other software quality factors. (feel free to comment):

==

  new FileOutputStream( "path", "a" );

==

  new FileOutputStream( "path", "append" );

==

  new FileOutputStream( "path", true );

==

  new FileOutputStream( "path", FileOutputStream.APPEND_MODE );

==

  new FileOutputStream( "path", FileAccessMode.APPEND_MODE );

==

  new FileOutputStream( path, new AppendMode() );

  /* here, ?AppendMode? might be a subtype of another type ?FileAccessMode? */

==

  new FileOutputStream( path, new FileAccessMode( "append" ));

==

  new AppendFileOutputStream( path );

  /* here, ?AppendFileOutputStream? might be a subtype of ?FileOutputStream? */

==

  Possibly, I have missed others possibilities to design this.

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