[jdom-interest] Why should I have to detach()?

[Steven D. Keens]

During one of my latest experiences with JDOM I got
an IllegalAddException when calling addContent( Element );

Not seeing any runtime exceptions declared in the docs I
went and looked at the code and found that
IllegalAddException is thrown when the new child element
already has a parent, when adding it to itselt or to a descendant.

I would like to know why?  Couldn't addContent() just detach
the new child element automatically from it's parent before
adding it?

The only reason I can see for doing that is to make
the user explicately aware that they are detaching
an element.  We had a similar structure in one of our
previous projects and we automatically detached the
child before changing its parent.  It was rarely
something that came up and bit us.

--
Steven Keens                mailto:skeens at planetfred.com
PlanetFred Inc.             http://www.planetfred.com
44 Byward Market, Suite 240, Ottawa, ON, K1N 7A2, Canada