xml-dev - Re: SAX2/Java: Towards a final form

[David Megginson <david@megginson.com>]

Stefan Haustein writes:
 > >  > Is "no namespace" reported with a null or empty String (for
 > >  > interned Strings, the equals problem does not exist)?
 > > 
 > > Empty string sounds like a reasonable suggestion when Namespace
 > > processing is being performed; null when it is not (so that a bugs in
 > > code will show up sooner).
 > 
 > To me, attrs.getValue ("", "href") looks strange, I would prefer 
 > attrs.getValue (null, "href"). But I could also live with the empty
 > string.  
 > I would not like if it is switchable, left to the parser, or both
 > allowed.
 > 
 > >  > Can I assume that namespace URIs are always interned?
 > > 
 > > That's a good question -- should SAX2 require that all names and
 > > Namespace URIs be interned (i.e. == to the results of
 > > java.lang.String.intern)?
 > 
 > I would suggest that only namespace interning is required: 
 > namespace URIs will be a small set of long strings, and
 > you do not meet them often while parsing. 
 > I think interning all names would slow down parsing too much (?). 

Or at least it would require some clever implementations.  Nearly all
parsers intern names anyway, but most use their own interning schemes
to speed things up.  To be compatible, they would need to call
java.lang.String.intern only once for each unique name (when it is
first inserted into the parser's private intern table).

I don't know if there's a lot of benefit in requiring this, though --
it's just a trial balloon right now.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david@megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/

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