Re: In UDAF, possible for terminatePartial to be called without init?

[Aurora Skarra-Gallagher <au...@yahoo-inc.com>]

Anyone know the answer to this?

Thanks,
Aurora

On Feb 15, 2011, at 8:53 AM, Aurora Skarra-Gallagher wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I wrote a simple UDAF for Hive 0.6 and I had to include null checks in terminatePartial even though the object should never be null if init is always called before terminatePartial.
> 
> For instance, my init function:
>        public void init() {
>            result = new StringBuffer();
>        }
> 
> My terminatePartial function:
>        public String terminatePartial() {
>            if (result == null) {
>                return new String();
>            }
> 
>            // Remove trailing comma, if string isn't blank
>            if (result.length() > 0 && result.charAt(result.length() - 1) == ',') {
>                result.deleteCharAt(result.length() - 1);
>            }
> 
>            return result.toString();
>        }
> 
> If I don't have that initial null check, when the results are empty that I'm applying my UDAF to, I get a NullPointerException. It makes me think that terminatePartial can be called with no init call. Is that possible?
> 
> Thanks,
> Aurora