Re: [Java-readline-devel] Java-Readline and tab completion

[Bernhard B. <ma...@ba...>]

Ok, your points are correct. I was more thinking about the implementation of 
the native code, which is easier with standard types. There you have to map 
every constant to a readline/editline variable, which should be quite simple 
with a lookup-table. The numeric constant (resp. the string constant after a 
atoi-conversion) would just be an index into an array.

Bernhard

> > void setVar(int which_variable, int value);
> > void setVar(String which_variable, String value);
> > int getVar(int which_variable);
> > String getVar(String which_variable);
>
> Using setVar() and getVar() works for me.  Using string constants for
> variable names does seem a little unclean though, simply because string
> comparisons aren't as clean as integer or pointer comparisons.
>
> The suggestion of IntVar and StrVar was for cleanness and consistency.
> If you're using strings then you either compare with String.equalTo()
> which is inconsistent with integer comparison, or you compare with ==
> in which case you're doing pointer comparisons and you might as well not
> assign values to the strings at all.
>
> Using IntVar and StrVar also avoids problems of implicit conversion if
> (for instance) we later add character variables or whatever; you can
> implicitly convert (char which_variable) to (int which_variable) but not
> (CharVar which_variable) to (IntVar which_variable), which means it's a
> little safer in the long run.
>
> The user of course doesn't even need to know that the IntVar and StrVar
> classes exist; they simply call getVar(INHIBIT_COMPLETION) or whatever.
>
> Anyway, it should be relatively straightforward to change from one
> implementation to the other, without affecting the use of the library at
> all.
>
> b.