[jdom-interest] Thoughts on...

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

At 4:42 PM +0000 3/15/01, Gary Bentley wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Could I request that there be new methods added to Element so that "text"
>content can be added via primitive types and object.  In other words have:
>
>	Element.addContent (Object obj);
>	Element.addContent (int val);
>	Element.addContent (long val);
>	Element.addContent (char val);
>	Element.addContent (float val);
>	Element.addContent (double val);
>	Element.addContent (boolean val);
>	Element.addContent (char[] vals);
>
>as well as: Element.addContent (String val);
>
>In other words have it similar to how PrintStream works.  Currently I have
>to convert all my values myself, which is a pain.
>

May I ask that this not be done? The question of how to properly 
convert a binary number such as a double into a decimal number, and 
then convert that into a string, is a much more complicated on than 
it appears at first glance. It requires significant input from the 
programmer as to what they want to happen in many different cases. 
The java.text.DecimalFormat class provides a proper APi for this. 
PrintStream() does not.

JDOM should not be burdened with the very difficult problem of how to 
convert a number to a String. We should let programmers do it as they 
see fit in their applications. If a programmer really does just want 
the default behavior of PrintStream, then it's straightforward to 
write

e.addContent(String.valueOf(x));

or

e.addContent("" + x);

Very little is gained by adding the proposed methods, though they do 
make the API larger and more complicated.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo at metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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