Re: Collection, enum or something else?

Todd wrote:


I think you might be over complicating things. What's the matter with:

public class Shrub
{
   String name;
   String continent;

   public Shrub( String name, String continent )
   {
     this.name = name;
     this.continent = continent;
   }
}

Then you just can just do this:

public class ShrubsOfTheWorld
{
   Map<String,Shrub> byName = new HashMap<String,Shrub>();
   Map<String,Shrub> byContinent = new TreeMap<String,Shrub>();

   public void addShrub( Shrub s )
   {
     byName.put( s.name, s );
     byContinent( s.continent, s );
   }
}

Or something. I think you're over complicating things by using an enum,
for sure. There are probably not a finite list of shrubs that you want
to enumerate, and more will be discovered. My primary clue here was that
just a Shrub object was good enough inside your enum. If it is, then
you don't need the enum or a subclasse. "Prefer composition to
inheritance." And that's what I did. Rather than subclass or make an
enum, I just composed Shrug so that it had the property needed.

I guess an enum for the continents makes sense though. Unlikely that
any new continents will come along.

BTW I chose TreeMap because I think it will handle the large number of
collisions better that storing by continent will cause than a hash map
would. There's probably a better way to do this, I just did a quick
first pass at it.