Re: Collection Issue

From:
adrian.bartholomew@gmail.com
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:56:21 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<f3aab24b-c448-4e53-9c52-f4c2f344cd74@x35g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>
On Sep 25, 1:35 pm, Mark Space <marksp...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

adrian.bartholo...@gmail.com wrote:

I have 2 Collections.
One of them has only one element that I want removed from the other.
Naturally I do:

listA.removeAll(listB);

I keep getting null position pointer.
So I copy the java utils code and modify it a bit and realise that the
problem lies in the "contains()" code.
When I check for equality of the element in listB to be removed from
listA with "==", it returns "true".
But when I check with ".equals()" it returns false.
This is flabbergasting to me. To my knowledge, "==" checks to see if
the Objects are at the same address. If that is true, how on earth
could ANYTHING about them be different?


So, "equals()" is a method that anyone can override. Obviously, someone
did override it, and botched the job. (Or your class derives from a
class that overrides the equals() method.)

What is the list element that you are dealing with here? Can we have a
look at its code?


sure:

public class RemoteEventListenerList<T extends RemoteEventListener>
implements
        InvocationHandler {
    private List<T> list = new LinkedList<T>();
    private List<T> toAdd = new ArrayList<T>();
    private final Class<T> type;
    private T proxy = null;
    private List<T> toRemove = new ArrayList<T>();

    public RemoteEventListenerList(Class<T> type) {
        this.type = type;
    }

    public Object invoke(Object o, Method method, Object[] args)
            throws Throwable {
        updateList();
        dispatchList(list, method, args);
        while (moreAdded()) {
            final List<T> temp = new ArrayList<T>(toAdd);
            updateList();
            dispatchList(temp, method, args);
        }
        return null;
    }

    private void updateList() {
        doRemove();
        doAdd();
    }

    private boolean moreAdded() {
        return !toAdd.isEmpty();
    }

    private void dispatchList(List<T> dispList, Method method,
Object[] args)
            throws IllegalAccessException {
        for (Object t : dispList.toArray()) {
            dispatch(method, type.cast(t), args);
        }
    }

    private synchronized void doRemove() {
        removeAll(list, toRemove);
        //removeAll(list, toRemove);
        toRemove.clear();
    }

    private void doAdd() {
        list.addAll(toAdd);
        toAdd.clear();
    }

    public void removeAll(List<T> l, List<T> c) {
        Iterator<T> e = l.iterator();
        while (e.hasNext()) {
            if (contains(l, e.next())) {//when it reaches the element,
it throws a null exception
                e.remove(); // even though it DOES contain
it.
            }
        }
    }

// I was experimenting here.

/*
    public void removeAll(List<T> l, List<T> c) {
        for (T e: l) {
            if (contains(l, e)) {
                l.remove(e);
            }
        }
    }
*/

    public boolean contains(List<T> c, T l) {
        for (T e: c) {
            if (e == l) return true;
        }
        return false;
    }

    private void dispatch(Method method, T t, Object[] args)
            throws IllegalAccessException {
        try {
            method.invoke(t, args);
        } catch (InvocationTargetException e) {
            if (!(e.getTargetException() instanceof
DisconnectedException)) {
                e.getTargetException().printStackTrace();
                remove(t);
            } else {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        } catch (RuntimeException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public T getProxy() {
        if (proxy == null) {
            proxy = type.cast(Proxy
                    .newProxyInstance(type.getClassLoader(), new
Class[]{type}, this)
            );
        }
        return proxy;
    }

    public void add(T t) {
        toAdd.add(t);
    }

    private void remove(T t) {
        toRemove.add(t);
    }

    public void removeToAdd(T t) {
        toAdd.remove(t);
        remove(t); // I added this later, not sure about it
    }
}

</code>

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