Re: java.lang vs java.util

From:

"Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Sat, 2 Apr 2011 07:57:33 -0700

Message-ID:

<in7dg0$pv$1@dont-email.me>

"Arved Sandstrom" <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> wrote in message
news:tYElp.789$rB2.37@newsfe21.iad...

On 11-04-02 02:52 AM, Lew wrote:

On 04/02/2011 12:23 AM, Patricia Shanahan wrote:

On 4/1/2011 9:11 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

Surprising to see something defined in java.lang
<http://developer.android.com/reference/java/lang/Iterable.html>
depend on
something defined in java.util
<http://developer.android.com/reference/java/util/Iterator.html>.

Surely the hierarchy should go the other way?

Not if it wants to be consistent with
http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/
don't'cha think?

And the so-called "hierarchy" of java.util and java.lang is that they
are equal. The language reserves for itself the entire panoply of
java.* and javax.* packages.

I think Iterable may make it into java.lang because of its significance
in the foreach statement.

That seems to go against Java's history of conservatism with respect to
backward compatibility. And why should it? java.lang and java.util are
equal. The language reserves for itself the entire panoply of java.*
and javax.* packages.

java.util from Day One has simply been a grab-bag package. The name
"util" already says "we didn't know where else to put it". It's a bad
example and a bad naming choice which has led to innumerable copycats in
the form of not only third-party org.foo.util packages, but the
inevitable follow-on, FooUtils classes (which are almost invariably
grab-bag classes).

Collections certainly deserve their own package. And arrays should
implement List, as they do in .NET. (Arrays of objects, anyway -- there are
obvious issues with arrays of primitives.)