Re: NetBeans awkward warning overriding hashCode

From:
Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.spamfilter@virtualinfinity.net>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:11:04 -0700
Message-ID:
<48adaf5f$0$17645$7836cce5@newsrazor.net>
Ben Phillips wrote:

This seems to be a minor irritation with NetBeans: if you have a class A
that overrides equals() with something like

if (o == this) return true;
if (o == null) return false;
if (!o instanceof A) return false;
// and maybe
if (o.getClass() != getClass()) return false; // objects of different
                                              // subclasses aren't equal
return equalTo((A)o);

public abstract boolean equalTo (A other);

and hashCode with something like

throw new Error("My subclass should have overridden me!");

and then, in a subclass B, implement equalTo and hashCode (to be
consistent with one another), NetBeans warns of having overridden
hashCode without equals.

This is just a touch annoying, since it means you either have the
warning or else have to repeat a bunch of boilerplate equals() code in
every subclass.

Is there an @SuppressWarnings for this, or a NetBeans update in the
works that will make it smarter about guessing if a subclass really is
implementing equalTo in some indirect manner (say, because it implements
a boolean-returning abstract method the superclass declares and only
calls from inside equals())?


public final boolean equals(Object o) { /*...code from above...*/ }
public final int hashCode() { return realHashCode(); }

protected abstract boolean equalTo(A other);
protected abstract int realHashCode();

This will do two things:
force people to implement both realHashCode and equalTo,
and it will prevent people from overriding your equals and hashCode in
ways that circumvent what you've tried to do.

HTH.
Daniel.
--
Daniel Pitts' Tech Blog: <http://virtualinfinity.net/wordpress/>

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