uk.ac.starlink.table.join

Interface LinkSet

All Superinterfaces:

Iterable<RowLink>

public interface LinkSet
extends Iterable<RowLink>

Holds an unordered collection of unique RowLink objects. The set is understood to be mutable - that is the methods (including iterator().remove() should not throw UnsupportedOperationExceptions.

Although its methods are very similar to those of a Set, this is not a Set implementation. This is because it will have a pretty specialised use - in particular you should usually treat it as though it may contain a very large number of elements and hence think carefully about efficiency of access methods rather than take advantage of the convenience methods available in the Collections package.

Since:

7 Sep 2005

Author:

Mark Taylor

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
void	addLink(RowLink link) Adds a new link to this set.
boolean	containsLink(RowLink link) Indicates whether this set contains a given link.
Iterator<RowLink>	iterator() Returns an iterator over the elements of this set.
boolean	removeLink(RowLink link) Removes an existing link from this set.
int	size() Returns the number of items in this set.
Collection<RowLink>	toSorted() Returns a collection of RowLink objects that has the same content as this LinkSet, but with entries in their natural (Comparable) order.

Methods inherited from interface java.lang.Iterable

forEach, spliterator

Method Detail

addLink

void addLink(RowLink link)

Adds a new link to this set. If the set has any existing entries equivalent to link (by equals) they should be removed.

Parameters:

link - row link to add

containsLink

boolean containsLink(RowLink link)

Indicates whether this set contains a given link.

Parameters:

link - link to test

Returns:

true iff this set contains an entry equal to link

removeLink

boolean removeLink(RowLink link)

Removes an existing link from this set.

Parameters:

link - link to remove

Returns:

true iff link was there in the first place

iterator

Iterator<RowLink> iterator()

Returns an iterator over the elements of this set.

Specified by:

iterator in interface Iterable<RowLink>

Returns:

iterator, which should have a working remove() method

size

int size()

Returns the number of items in this set.

Returns:

set size

toSorted

Collection<RowLink> toSorted()

Returns a collection of RowLink objects that has the same content as this LinkSet, but with entries in their natural (Comparable) order.

The result is not intended for modification; it may or may not be backed by this object, so subsequent modifications of this LinkSet while it's in use are not recommended.

Returns:

unmodifiable sorted collection of the row links in this set