On 10/01/2014 11:21, Paul Sandoz wrote:
Hi,
When we added the List.sort method the default implementation deferred to
Collections.sort.
This is the wrong way around, since any existing use of Collections.sort say
with ArrayList will not avail of the optimal implementation provided by
ArrayList.sort.
To resolve this the implementation of Collections.sort can be moved to
List.sort and Collections.sort can defer to List.sort.
Code changes are here:
http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~psandoz/jdk9/JDK-8030848-Collections-sort/webrev/
I made some tweaks to Arrays.sort to preserve cases when the Comparator is null.
Existing tests provide good coverage and there are no regressions when i run
j.u. tests locally.
I am not happy with the current documentation though, i think that also
requires some refactoring, moving stuff from Collections.sort to List.sort and
explicitly stating what the current implementation of Collections.sort does. I
believe this requires no spec changes even though it may appear so. Thoughts?
Also, i am concerned that this change could cause stack overflows for list
implementations that override sort and still defer to Collections.sort.
Implying we should fix this for 8 or quickly in an 8u.
Paul.
The implementation changes look good. I agree that the javadoc needs
changing as it's otherwise misleading as to what the implementation
actually does. I would think that this should go with the implementation
change rather than as a separate change.
So is the stack overflow concern with List implementations that were
originally developed to target JDK 7 or older? In any case, this is the
type of change more suitable to a major release.
-Alan.
