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Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:07:15 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Levon Karayan (JIRA)" <jira@apache.org>
To: issues@commons.apache.org
Subject: [jira] Updated: (LANG-534) ArrayUtils should have method to convert
 null arrays to empty ones to help with Defensive coding
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     [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LANG-534?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel ]

Levon Karayan updated LANG-534:
-------------------------------

    Summary: ArrayUtils should have method to convert null arrays to empty ones to help with Defensive coding  (was: ArrayUtils should have method to conver null arrays to empty ones to help with Defensive coding)

> ArrayUtils should have method to convert null arrays to empty ones to help with Defensive coding
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: LANG-534
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LANG-534
>             Project: Commons Lang
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>            Reporter: Levon Karayan
>            Priority: Trivial
>         Attachments: 20090920LevonArrayUtils-nullToEmpty.patch
>
>   Original Estimate: 0.17h
>  Remaining Estimate: 0.17h
>
> There are APIs that I've come across that return <code>null</code> Arrays in the event where there are no results.  Often these APIs correctly throw exceptions when there is an "exceptional event", but no results isn't exceptional, and it often shouldn't be.   This causes the programmer to make extra tests for null throughout the code to deal with the null case, and sometimes these null cases are added after a customer searched for gobleygook and got a NullPointerException.  It's just far cleaner/safer to convert these null arrays to empty arrays.
> Another benefit to this method is that if the array being passed in is actually already an empty array, it will swap the pointer for the <code>static final</code> in the ArrayUtils class to help decrease memory fragmentation.
> e.g.
> BEFORE:
> try
> {
>   results = customer.getResults(query);
> } catch ( IOException ioex ) {
>   //  ...
> }
> if ( null == results )
> {
>    results = new int[0]{};
> }
> // do stuff
> AFTER
> try
> {
>   results = ArrayUtils.nullToEmpty(customer.getResults(query));
> } catch ( IOException ioex ) {
>   //  ...
> }
> // do stuff

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