On 12/07/2013 6:22 AM, Paul Benedict wrote:
Paul S.'s said the "negative" of using AutoCloseable is "it is no longer
clear whether a stream should be closed or not" (6/20). That's true because
the semantics of AutoCloseable indicates you have a resource that requires
closing.

However, the choice to make MayHoldCloseableResource a sub-interface of
AutoClosable should be resisted. It's an inverted design. The Liskov
*substitution principle *says that sub-interfaces can't loosen the contracts
> of their superinterface.

Not quite. It says:

- Preconditions cannot be strengthened in a subtype.
- Postconditions cannot be weakened in a subtype.
- Invariants of the supertype must be preserved in a subtype.

Question is: what kind of property is "closeability"?

If anything, AutoCloseable should be subclass of this new
interface, which MIGHT hold a resource that requires closing. The current
choice is just plainly backwards.

No what you just said is "plainly backwards". If AutoCloseable is a subtype of MHCR then you should be able to use an AC instance anywhere you use a MHCR. But valid code doesn't have to close a MHCR, so if you replace it with an AC which requires closing then you have broken code. Hence not substitutable, hence invalid inheritance relationship.

But if anything this is just another variation of the Square/Rectangle inheritance fallacy. While you can define either as a specialization of the other, you can always violate substitutability by doing something that relies on the property that gets specialized.

David
-----


For the above reason stated, and for the fact the interface adds no new
functionality, it's superfluous. If the interface relationship can't be
inverted, then chuck it -- it does nothing anyway. At the least, keep the
annotation.

Paul


On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 3:01 PM, Henry Jen <henry....@oracle.com> wrote:

On 07/11/2013 01:13 AM, Florian Weimer wrote:
On 07/10/2013 11:30 PM, Henry Jen wrote:

A new interface, java.util.MayHoldCloseableResource, indicates an
implementation may or may not hold a resource need to be closed.

Why doesn't close() throw Exception?

Because there is really much a developer can do on that situation. The
API simply make it not throw a *checked* exception.

See EG discussion on this topic,


http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/lambda-libs-spec-experts/2013-June/002081.html


Annotation {@link HoldsResource} may be used to guide users/static
analysis tools that a MHCR instance that definitely hold a Closeable
resource.

All this looks a bit odd to me.  I suppose the idea is that you don't
want to give up the last reference to a closeable resource without
calling close()—and not leak references which out-live the call to
close().  This is definitely not a property of the type of the resource,
so I don't see why the MayHoldCloseableResource interface is needed (or
can confer relevant information).  The HoldsResource annotation could be
useful, but based on the current documentation, it's not clear if it is
actually intended to express the data flow property.


I would suggest you look at EG discussion on this topic. The MHCR is
different from AutoCloseable on the chances of holding critical resources.

Perhaps that suggests the javadoc is not clear enough, I would like to
know what is important and missing.

Cheers,
Henry





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