On Aug 19 2013, at 13:12 , Guy Steele wrote:
>
> On Aug 19, 2013, at 3:17 PM, Mike Duigou <mike.dui...@oracle.com> wrote:
>
>> - I find disallowing the zero bounds and empty ranges slightly annoying. It
>> requires me to externally special case for situations such as:
>>
>> Random ran = new Random();
>> String[] users = {"Fred"};
>>
>> someUser = users[mine.nextInt(users.length - 1)];
>>
>> This is a frequently used idiom. Yes, forcing the random number generator to
>> return zero is silly but for symmetry it is convenient. An empty range isn't
>> an obvious error (though the "String[] users = {};" case is obviously an
>> error).
> If you want a free choice among ALL elements in the (non-empty) array, then
>
> someUser = users[mine.nextInt(users.length)];
>
> is what you want; and if the array is empty, then you'll get an exception
> from the nextInt method rather than the array indexing step, but that amounts
> to the same thing: an inability to pick an element from an empty array.
Doh, yes. I knew it was important to document that bounds was exclusive--I
managed to confuse myself....
Mike
