Hi,

The question about static vs instance methods was raised during the review.
At the time, my rationale for the current API is summarized in this email.
https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/core-libs-dev/2020-October/070317.html

It comes down to choosing one kind of consistency vs another.

I was/am looking for additional comments to weigh one or the other alternative. I did receive one offline comment in support of static methods on the rationale of
convenience.

Regards, Roger


On 3/15/21 12:06 PM, Raffaello Giulietti wrote:
Hi,

the javadoc of most of the methods listed in my previous post below reads:     "The delimiter, prefix, suffix, and uppercase parameters are not used."

As these eventually constitute the whole state of an instance of this final class and as the state is not involved, it is possible to declare the methods as static.


If, for some reason, declaring the methods as static is not a choice, the next best thing is to clarify that
* HexFormat.of() always returns the same instance and thus
* absent any other instance, the recommended idiom for invoking any of the methods below is, for example,
    HexFormat.of().isHexDigit('F')
(because there are almost no additional costs wrt static methods.)
Note that HexFormat is specified as a value based class and
any statement related to identity is out of place.

Incidentally, its generally discouraged and can cause a warning when a static method is invoked using a reference.


But I don't see a reason why they should be non-static. Just oversight?


Greetings
Raffaello


On 2021-03-08 11:52, Raffaello Giulietti wrote:
Hello,

it appears that all of the following API methods in [1] can be declared *static*, which makes them more useful in contexts where there's no instance of HexFormat available or none is desired.

As 17 has not yet entered any formal phase, the change should be harmless.

   public boolean isHexDigit(int);
   public int fromHexDigit(int);
   public int fromHexDigits(java.lang.CharSequence);
   public int fromHexDigits(java.lang.CharSequence, int, int);
   public long fromHexDigitsToLong(java.lang.CharSequence);
   public long fromHexDigitsToLong(java.lang.CharSequence, int, int);

Greetings
Raffaello

----

[1] https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8251991

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