[VELOCITY-350] Base Equality on toString() when operands are of different classes

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.5
• Fix Version/s: 1.5
• Component/s: Engine
• Environment: Operating System: Windows XP; Platform: PC
• Bugzilla Id: 33322
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Will Glass-Husain
• Created: 01/Feb/05 14:05
• Updated: 08/Mar/07 00:04
• Resolved: 03/Oct/05 15:36

Description

This was discussed on the dev list a few weeks ago. If two objects being
compared are of different (non-numeric) classes, I'd like to see equality be
based on toString (rather than just be false). This just makes sense in a
template environment where types are not visible to template writers, and is
also the way that JSTL/JSP 2.0 works. This is particularly useful when
comparing a literal String to a class implementing Bloch's Typesafe
Enumeration pattern [1] or a StringBuffer.

Comments welcome.

[1]
http://java.sun.com/developer/Books/shiftintojava/