[jdom-interest] setText() to replace children?

[Alex Chaffee]

Steven D. Keens wrote:

> I like your idea but wouldn't it be better if the exception is thrown when
> there is mixed content.  Also, getText() could react the same way, by
> throwing an exception if it contains mixed content.  Thus, we retain the
> convenience of the two methods (isn't that why they exist, for convenience).
> Plus we have a consistent and symetric API that behaves predictably.
> 


No exceptions!  Exceptions are bad!  I don't want to have to catch an 
exception every time I call getText, and I also don't want my thread to die 
with an unchecked exception if the program reads a data file with invalid 
mixed content.  getText should not throw an exception; it should return a 
String like it says it does.  I don't even really care what that string 
contains as long as it's unambiguous and documented.

(Though I like Rusty's "recurse" proposal the more I think about it.)

If anyone wants more complex behavior (wrt whitespace or whatever) they can 
walk the list themselves in 3 lines of code, or just use XMLOutputter.


-- 
Alex Chaffee                       mailto:alex at jguru.com
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