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Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 01:43:43 -0700
Message-ID: <31cc37360904090143x43975f41qecf40d4f6bbdeef5@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: [LANG] Null-protection methods
From: Henri Yandell <flamefew@gmail.com>
To: Commons Developers List <dev@commons.apache.org>
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Is the following worth keeping in Lang?

public Foo someJdkMethod(Object input) {
    if(input == null) {
        handleAccordingly();
    }
    return input.jdkMethod();
}

I feel that we've bloated up with these methods, and is it really
worth it? I still have lots of if(x != null && x.callFoo()) type
invocations, having a small handful of methods available in Lang to
let me say if(FooUtils.callFoo(x)) isn't enough to hide all of the
other times when I might have to worry about it.

Personally I'd like to see these methods removed from Lang [especially
given Stephen's blogging about null protected setting in some future
JVM].

An example:

    public static String trim(String str) {
        return str == null ? null : str.trim();
    }

Given that I'm likely to do N things to the string, chances are I'll
check for null up front and then invoke methods rather than repeatedly
writing ugly code by using StringUtils.

Any thoughts in favour of these methods?

Hen

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