[jira] Commented: (HADOOP-6298) BytesWritable#getBytes is a bad name that leads to programming mistakes

["Chris Douglas (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-6298?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12763295#action_12763295 ] 

Chris Douglas commented on HADOOP-6298:
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bq. I propose "getPaddedBytes()" or "getPaddedValue()". It would also be helpful to have a helper method "getNonPaddedValue()" that makes a copy into a non-padded byte array.

Changing BytesWritable's API is a non-starter. Keys and values are reused and allocating new backing for each record is not an endurable expense. Marking valid data is typical for Writables, e.g. BytesWritable and Text.

If this issue modified the javadoc to make this more prominent, that would be reasonable.

> BytesWritable#getBytes is a bad name that leads to programming mistakes
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: HADOOP-6298
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-6298
>             Project: Hadoop Common
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>    Affects Versions: 0.20.1
>            Reporter: Nathan Marz
>
> Pretty much everyone at Rapleaf who has worked with Hadoop has misused BytesWritable#getBytes at some point, not expecting the byte array to be padded. I think we can completely alleviate these programming mistakes by deprecating and renaming this method (again) to be more descriptive. I propose "getPaddedBytes()" or "getPaddedValue()". It would also be helpful to have a helper method "getNonPaddedValue()" that makes a copy into a non-padded byte array. 

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