StringBuilder Difficulties

From:

Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:54:38 -0700

Message-ID:

<c4tk07dv1pq7u8k32qd6b7o1brc2rj8r30@4ax.com>

Dear Java'ers:

     I am working with StringBuilder now. I grant that it is faster
in execution, but it is taking a bunch of my time to get it straight.
I decided to change my VRString class (call-by-value-result) to
VRStringB. Complications ensued.

     The amount of ornamentation required in my code was nasty, so I
did some simplifying.

     How does one assign a String value to a StringBuilder variable?
For the class below (before I defined .Set()), I needed
          cParsedWord.Value.replace(
       0,cParsedWord.Value.length(),cScan.substring(xStart,xEnd));
With .Set(), I just need
          cParsedWord.Value.Set(cScan.substring(xStart,xEnd));

     For value equality to a String value, one needs something like
          cParsedWord.Value.toString().equals("some value")
(because without the .toString(), the comparison will fail) whereas
with .equals() below, this will do it
          cParsedWord.equals("some value")

***** Start of Code *****
// VRStringB Class
// StringBuilder Value-Result Parameter Handling
// Last Modification: 2011-06-28

class VRStringB
   {
   StringBuilder Value;

   VRStringB()
      {
      this.Value=new StringBuilder("");
      }

   VRStringB
    (
    StringBuilder Init
    )
      {
      this.Value=Init;
      }

   boolean equals
    (
    String theString
    )
      {
      return this.Value.toString().equals(theString);
      }

   void Set
    (
    String theString
    )
      {
      this.Value.replace(0,this.Value.length(),theString);
      }
   }
***** End of Code *****

     Am I missing something about StringBuilder, or is it really this
difficult to play with? It would make a lot more sense to me if
StringBuilder worked more like String does.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko