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Groups > comp.lang.java.programmer > #9813

equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality

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Anyone ever run into the case where you wish an Object could have more than one equals(), or that Set and Map implementations would let you pass in something like a closure to determine key equality?

It seems to me that objects can be equal in varying degrees. Let's consider a class Dog:

public class Dog {
  String breed;
  String name;
  String age;
}

I may want to have a Set<Dog>, which holds only one Dog of each breed, irrespective of name of age. In this case my equals()/hashcode() would only consider breed.

But I may also want a Mag<Dog, Owner> in which each Dog is made unique by name.

And of course, there is the most intuitive case where I want to use equals() to see if the instances map on all three fields.

I suppose I could create a wrapper class for each purpose which only overrides equals() and hashcode(), but that seems very unsatisfying and inefficient.

I'm interested in how other people have dealt with this. Surprisingly, I have not been able to Google up much on this subject. 

Thoughts?

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equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Sean Mitchell <sean@mitchwood.com> - 2011-11-09 18:33 -0800
  Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Owen Jacobson <angrybaldguy@gmail.com> - 2011-11-09 22:10 -0500
    Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality v_borchert@despammed.com (Volker Borchert) - 2011-11-10 04:42 +0000
  Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-11-09 22:11 -0500
    Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality markspace <-@.> - 2011-11-09 22:43 -0800
      Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Sean Mitchell <sean@mitchwood.com> - 2011-11-10 06:33 -0800
        Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality markspace <-@.> - 2011-11-10 07:21 -0800
          Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Sean Mitchell <sean@mitchwood.com> - 2011-11-10 07:29 -0800
            Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality markspace <-@.> - 2011-11-10 10:27 -0800
            Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-11-10 20:58 -0500
              Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality markspace <-@.> - 2011-11-10 19:07 -0800
                Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2011-11-10 23:24 -0500
                Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality markspace <-@.> - 2011-11-10 20:55 -0800
              Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Sean Mitchell <sean@mitchwood.com> - 2011-11-11 10:27 -0800
                Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-11-11 14:21 -0800
    Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Sean Mitchell <sean@mitchwood.com> - 2011-11-10 06:31 -0800
      Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2011-11-10 11:27 -0800
  Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2011-11-10 16:01 -0800
  Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Andreas Leitgeb <avl@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at> - 2011-11-11 09:08 +0000
    Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-11-11 07:27 -0800
      Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Sean Mitchell <sean@mitchwood.com> - 2011-11-11 10:28 -0800
        Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-11-11 14:22 -0800
          Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality markspace <-@.> - 2011-11-11 15:19 -0800
          Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-11-13 21:18 -0800
            Re: equals(), Sets, Maps, and degrees of equality Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-11-16 09:15 -0800

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