Admittedly, it's a different usage pattern, but it follows the JDOM
pattern of Element.addContent(...), which returns 'this'.
-bob
On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> The return type of the following method in org.jaxen.BaseXPath is
> questionable, IMO:
>
> public BaseXPath <cid:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *addNamespace*(String
><http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.3/docs/api/java/lang/String.html> prefix, String
><http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.3/docs/api/java/lang/String.html> uri) throws J
axenException
>
>
> Why does it return BaseXPath? Shouldn't it return void? Does this really create a
> new and different object rather than changing the existing object? (The JavaDoc
> is regrettably missing.) If it's merely changing an existing object the standard
> return type is void.
>
> I suspect it's trying to allow statements like this:
>
>
> xpath.addNamespace("prefix", "uri").addNamespace("prefix2",
>"uri2").addNamespace("prefix3", "uri3");
>
> <cid:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> Honestly, however, I find this extremely ugly and would never
> write code like this, even if I could. It won't even be necessary
> in the majority of cases that use zero or one namespace.
> Returning an object itself from what amounts to a setter method
> is just strange. It is not a normal pattern in Java. I think this method
> should simple return void.
>
> --
> +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
> | Elliotte Rusty Harold | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Writer/Programmer |
> +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
> | The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (IDG Books, 2001) |
> | http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/bible2/ |
> | http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/ |
> +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
> | Read Cafe au Lait for Java News: http://www.cafeaulait.org/ |
> | Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/ |
> +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
>
>
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