> Thanks, although I'm a little confused ;-) > > What benefit does CommonsLinkedList give? A NodeCachingLinkedList class > is allowed to subclass LinkedList directly. The licencing issue was that > some of the methods in NodeCachingLinkedList were copied verbatim, > especially noted in the javadoc. A reimplementation of > NodeCachingLinkedList that directly extends LinkedList would be fine > (written solely from the spec/idea, no copied code), unless > CommonsLinkedList gives us something extra. I feel like I've missed > something!
Good question. You're right that CommonsLinkedList doesn't really give any extra benefit, at least in terms of features it offers. However, I think it is nice in an OO sense, and it might be useful again in the future. CommonsLinkedList is just another implementation of LinkedList, except, perhaps, that it is a little easier to subclass than LinkedList. This is a particularly useful for implementing NodeCachingLinkedList. NodeCachingLinkedList extends CommonsLinkedList. To implement caching it just overrides the CommonLinkedList's node creation and node removal methods. By having two classes I think we get a really nice separation of concerns: one class knows about being a list, the other knows about caching. I think that merging them together would result in a much messier implementation. Just my opinion, of course. :-) Another consideration is the fact that CommonsLinkedList might be a nice class to use for future adaptions to LinkedList. The standard LinkedList is pretty much opaque to subclasses. This is good for a public API, but it makes it pretty difficult to extend. CommonsLinkedList might be useful to keep around as a package visible class. Rich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
