| /* Dictionary.java -- an abstract (and essentially worthless) |
| class which is Hashtable's superclass |
| Copyright (C) 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc. |
| |
| This file is part of GNU Classpath. |
| |
| GNU Classpath is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify |
| it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by |
| the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) |
| any later version. |
| |
| GNU Classpath is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but |
| WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of |
| MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU |
| General Public License for more details. |
| |
| You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License |
| along with GNU Classpath; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the |
| Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA |
| 02111-1307 USA. |
| |
| As a special exception, if you link this library with other files to |
| produce an executable, this library does not by itself cause the |
| resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. |
| This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the |
| executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License. */ |
| |
| |
| package java.util; |
| |
| /** |
| * A Dictionary maps keys to values; <i>how</i> it does that is |
| * implementation-specific. |
| * |
| * This is an abstract class which has really gone by the wayside. |
| * People at Javasoft are probably embarrassed by it. At this point, |
| * it might as well be an interface rather than a class, but it remains |
| * this poor, laugable skeleton for the sake of backwards compatibility. |
| * At any rate, this was what came before the <pre>Map</pre> interface |
| * in the Collections framework. |
| * |
| * @author Jon Zeppieri |
| */ |
| public abstract class Dictionary extends Object |
| { |
| /** returns an Enumeration of the values in this Dictionary */ |
| public abstract Enumeration elements(); |
| |
| /** |
| * returns the value associated with the supplied key, or null |
| * if no such value exists |
| * |
| * @param key the key to use to fetch the value |
| */ |
| public abstract Object get(Object key); |
| |
| /** returns true IFF there are no elements in this Dictionary (size() == 0) */ |
| public abstract boolean isEmpty(); |
| |
| /** returns an Enumeration of the keys in this Dictionary */ |
| public abstract Enumeration keys(); |
| |
| /** |
| * inserts a new value into this Dictionary, located by the |
| * supllied key; note: Dictionary's subclasses (all 1 of them) |
| * do not support null keys or values (I can only assume this |
| * would have been more general) |
| * |
| * @param key the key which locates the value |
| * @param value the value to put into the Dictionary |
| */ |
| public abstract Object put(Object key, Object value); |
| |
| /** |
| * removes fro the Dictionary the value located by the given key |
| * |
| * @param key the key used to locate the value to be removed |
| */ |
| public abstract Object remove(Object key); |
| |
| /** returns the number of values currently in this Dictionary */ |
| public abstract int size(); |
| } |