Mailing-List: contact harmony-dev-help@incubator.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org
Received-SPF: pass (asf.osuosl.org: domain of mloenko@gmail.com designates
 66.249.92.205 as permitted sender)
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws;
        s=beta; d=gmail.com;
        h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references;
        b=nsJjx4D8ZpTzBzjsfjC1ITqsxOjRXJoDtjiUMwf2YF+cQaOFxiT792Vmv+v++XkR/3iNjEXMxB+uzRhYzyhd317YfEAqo876e66P0D953gujedygupLwJGc0PHzVnrBbmyIkbAteBH/njIERA4nOChX2ZWbjUWudRX+lcXPa5yo=
Message-ID: <906dd82e0603170111l3c8fd3dep@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 15:11:30 +0600
From: "Mikhail Loenko" <mloenko@gmail.com>
To: harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: NullPointerException
In-Reply-To: <ac85de250603161733i7f43250dhf106447a40d8654a@mail.gmail.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline
References: <ac85de250603161733i7f43250dhf106447a40d8654a@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Karan,

Actually there is a number of conditions that affect final case-by-case mad=
e
decision:

1. The spec might say
    a) that SomeException (SE) is thrown in case of null arg
    b) that SE is thrown in case of "invalid" arg
    c) nothing about wrong args

2. The class and method under consideration might pass argument and control
to some user's or third-party class (like some handler or crypto algorithm)=
 and
RI's NPE happens originally there. In this case we should study the
spec for that
class, implications of null arguments in that class and case-by-case decide=
.

I think being compatible with RI is by-default decision, and in
the majority of cases is the right decision to take.

BTW, explicit check of an arg for null would unnoticably slow down executio=
n
in case of non-null argument but would siginificantly speed it up in
case of null.
Once again, decision is to be made case-by-case

Thanks,
Mikhail