[jdom-interest] Last call: getChild/getChildren versus getChildElement/getChildElements

[Bradley S. Huffman]

Elliotte Rusty Harold writes:

> At 2:26 PM -0600 2/6/04, Bradley S. Huffman wrote:
> 
> >But one is just a very restrict case of the other, so why have 2 ways of
> >doing the same thing with two different interfaces when one consistent
> >inferace is all that's really need?
> 
> The same reason you have any other convenience method: because it 
> makes common operations a lot simpler.

Really? Using a little XOM code as an example, I find

    for (int i = 0; i < element.getChildCount(); i++) {
        Node child = element.getChild(i);
        if (child instanceof Element) {
            processElement(children.get(i));   
        }
    }

just as easy as

    Elements children = element.getChildElements();
    for (int i = 0; i < children.size(); i++) {
      processElement(children.get(i));   
    }

And is getChildElements("bar") in JDOM and XOM really more convenient
that dom4j Node.selectNodes("child::bar")? It isn't as powerfull. Is it
faster? Maybe/maybe not. Will that still be true next year? Agian maybe/maybe
not.

But again, this late in the game, this is all just a mental exercise.

Brad