Re: Java type-casting -- Q3

From:

Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:52:57 -0700

Message-ID:

<OLSdnSoqH7t0lV3XnZ2dnUVZ_s2dnZ2d@earthlink.com>

markspace wrote:

grz01 wrote:

2) writing their individual and mutually
   incompatible, almost identical versions of
      my.useful.goodies.package.Pair<A,B>
   or
      my.other.goodies.package.Triple<A,B,C>

Seriously, aside from the example that I just wrote for you, never. I've
always defined a type that had some other meaning besides "I'm holding
these types for someone else."

For example the last "pair" I designed was for a time keeping
application. I had two longs, and I needed to determine how much time
existed between them. I didn't use an array or a generic "Pair", I made
a class called "Interval" and put the start time and end time in that.
Simple, easy, and described the problem space almost intuitively.

This is a good example of what I meant in an earlier message by "The
solution using a Pair class is far better, except I would name the class
for whatever is in common between the two lists."

If well-designed, cohesive method returns two values, they have some
joint meaning.

Patricia