[GROOVY-2995] GString: document or coerce

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.5.6
• Fix Version/s: 1.6-rc-1, 1.5.8, 1.7-beta-1
• Assignee: Guillaume Sauthier
• Reporter: Alexander Veit
• Created: 09/Aug/08 10:23
• Updated: 29/Oct/08 07:15
• Resolved: 29/Oct/08 07:15

Description

GStrings show surprising behaviour when used as keys in collections or in comparisons. This lead to a lot of issues, e.g. (GROOVY-626, GROOVY-2332, GROOVY-2330, GROOVY-951, GROOVY-2660, GROOVY-1959). The situation is even worse with lazy evaluation of closures in GStrings (see attached script).

So either

Document that the user should

• use GString#toString() instead of putting GString (as a key) into a collection, and
• use GString#toString() instead of GString in comparisons with a String.

Or

Coerce arguments that are instanceof GString to String if the receiving parameter's type is not GString or a type derived from GString.

I would prefer 1. over 2.