On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Marshall Schor<m...@schor.com> wrote: > Adam Lally wrote: >> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Jörn Kottmann<kottm...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Marshall Schor wrote: >>> >>>> The generification of FSIndex currently specifies one type, <T extends >>>> FeatureStructure> that is the type of item being returned. >>>> >>>> >>>> The contains and find methods have arguments of type FeatureStructure. >>>> These could be changed to take type "T". >>>> >>>> >>> No I do not think that they could be changed to take type T. >>> Lets take the case of the contains method. >>> The javadoc says: >>> "Check if the index contains an element equal to the given feature structure >>> according to the >>> ordering of the index. Note that this is in general not the same as feature >>> structure identity." >>> and it for the param fs it says "The FS we're looking for.". There is no >>> place where >>> it says that contains can only be called for FSes which have the type of the >>> index. >>> >>> The change of the parameter from FeatureStructure to T would also change >>> the contract of the method a little, because then it would not be possible >>> anymore >>> to pass a FeatureStructure which has not type T. >>> >>> >> >> I agree. It's sometimes useful to call FSIterator.moveTo method and >> pass an FS of a Type other than the one that the index was defined >> over, as part of implementing something like a subiterator. >> > > I agree with the case where it's the "bag" index being used, because > that uses a test which works on all feature structures. > > However, for Set and Sorted, the implication of passing a FS which is > not in the type hierarchy is, according to the JavaDocs, "undefined". > This is because the code assumes the layout of the features and their > values is appropriate for the type. In other words, if the type of some > key was a string, it might take a value from the main int heap and use > it as an index into the string array - and if the int heap object was > not the right type, it could pull an arbitrary value from that slot, and > end up throwing an array index out of bounds exception. When I looked, > it didn't appear to me that the code checked for any kind of type > subsumption before proceeding... (but I may have missed it...) > > It could turn out that the data (whatever is being pulled) would just > happen to "match", even though the types are different. > > Because this is an undefined operation that could throw various kinds of > runtime errors, or return an equal match where none really exists, I > think it should not be allowed, for set and sorted indexes. >
In the case of the AnnotationIndex, the object that you pass to FSIterator.moveTo must be a subtype of Annotation (else you would get all the weird effects that you describe). But it is still valid for a user to do: FSIndex<AnnotType1> index = cas.getAnnotationIndex(annotType1); index.moveTo(annotType2); where annotType1 and annotType2 are both subtypes of uima.tcas.Annotation. In general, the object that you pass to moveTo() must be a subtype of the type that was in the index definition (in the user's descriptor, or for the case of the built-in AnnotationIndex, uima.tcas.Annotation). -Adam
