Re: refid in property - sorry about the word wrap...

[Vincent Bergbauer <vi...@yahoo.com>]

Give me a couple more days.
This is what I am doing:
- Path, FileSet, and soon Arg implement the CompositeType interface:
   interface CompositeType {
      /**
       * Returns a array of String, representing each element of the object
       */
      String[] list();
      /**
       * Gets the separator character used by the <code>toString()</code>
method.
       */
      char getSeparator();
      /**
       * When <code>noDuplicate</code> is set to <code>true</code>, the list
       * returned by <code>list()</code> will not have any duplicate.
       */
      void setNoDuplicate(boolean noDuplicate);
      /**
       * Returns <code>true</code> if <code>list()</code> removes
duplicates.
       */
      boolean getNoDuplicate();
      /**
       * Returns a String with the specified (instead of the default)
separator
       */
      String toString(char separator);
  }

- Property will take an additional optional argument, called separator, that
  will cause the referenced object to return  a String with the specified
separator.
  Otherwise the default separator is used (path separator for Path, space
for Arg
  and FileSet.

- I consider separator a property of the referencing object (it wants a
specific view)
  rather than of the referenced object: a FileSet could be used with space
separator
  or path separator depending on the context.

- I consider the fact that a CompositeType returns or does not return
duplicate a property
  of the object itself.  In fact, I am not sure that setNoDuplicate() should
be public.

At this point, I have two issues:
- For FileSet to return a list of file, it requires context from a project.
I have decided to add
  a constructor that takes  a Project as argument like path. In fact I have
made project a field
  of DataType. But FileSets that are build directly from code won't have a
meaningful toString()
  method.
- I have no idea of what PatternSet should return in its toString method.

Code coming soon.
Vincent.



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