Re: Inconsistency in Map/KeyedCollection?

[glen e. p. ropella]

At 11:36 PM 1/13/00 -0700, you wrote:
> If my understanding is correct this this text is misleading
> and should be taken out, since none of the collections that
> implement the KeyedCollection protocol actually creates a
> collection for duplicate members.
>
> The 'collection of duplicate members' feature would of
> course be useful, but can be implemented fairly easily by
> the user.

Right.  It should be in a design document and the docs shouldn't
be ambiguous about what's implemented and what's not implemented
even if we left the stubs in.

> I've thus turned to creating a string from the double and
> implementing this compare: method:

Replacing the compare method is the right thing to do.
I would have designed a compare method to work with
doubles, myself.  Or, I might have used Double Objects
instead of native doubles.

> PS. Marcus has been advocating the use of Java collections
> instead of Swarm collections. How do Java Maps fare on this
> front?

Standard Java.util.Map doesn't allow 1-to-many mappings,
either.  For that reason (and a few other aesthetic ones)
I use JGL from ObjectSpace.  The problem you run into there
is that it screws up the Activity API, because it won't
accept JGL collections.  So, unfortunately, I've ended up
using JGL's algorithms for much of my bag operators in my
Java models, rather than relying on the forEach methods
in Activity.

But, overall, the JGL is, to me, an adequate implementation of
collections, whereas Swarm's collections isn't.

And while I'm on the integrationist's soapbox, I'll mention the
JNL (Java Numerics Library) from Visual Numerics (the publishers
of IMSL and PV-Wave/JWave).  That's a pleasant little math library
for Java.  I can actually do Cholesky decomposition without
being distracted with thoughts about creating or interfacing to
a more obscure implementation.

glen
refs:
http://www.objectspace.com
http://www.vni.com

--
glen e. p. ropella =><= Feeding the hamster wheel.  Hail Eris!
Home: http://www.swarm.com/gepr                (505) 424-0448
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