nz.ac.waikato.jdsl.core.api
Interface Position

All Superinterfaces:

Accessor, Decorable

All Known Subinterfaces:

Edge, Vertex

All Known Implementing Classes:

Edge.NONEEdge, NodeBinaryTree.NBTNode, NodeBinaryTree.NBTSuperNode, NodeSequence.FNSNode, Vertex.NONEVertex

public interface Position
extends Accessor, Decorable

An abstraction of the notion of a "place" in a container -- where an element is stored relative to other elements in the container. (A node of a tree and a vertex of a graph are examples of positions.) Conceptually, what Position adds to Accessor's ability to get an element is the ability to get such topological information; but the nature of the topological information varies with the container, so there are no new methods here.

When a position is no longer used by the container it is marked as invalid and any subsequent use of that position provokes an InvalidAccessorException. An InvalidAccessorException is also thrown when a Position belongs to a different container (either a container of a different type, or another container of this same type).

Two possible implementations of a position: as a wrapper around an index into an array, or as a reference to a node.

Version:

JDSL 2.1.1

Author:

Mark Handy (mdh), Benoit Hudson (bh), Andrew Schwerin (schwerin), Michael T. Goodrich, Roberto Tamassia

See Also:

PositionalContainer

Method Summary

Methods inherited from interface nz.ac.waikato.jdsl.core.api.Accessor

element

Methods inherited from interface nz.ac.waikato.jdsl.core.api.Decorable

attributes, destroy, get, has, set