org.apache.commons.collections.Buffer Maven / Gradle / Ivy

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 *  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 *  contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 *  this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 *  The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 *  (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 *  the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 *  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 *  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 *  limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.commons.collections;

import java.util.Collection;

/**
 * Defines a collection that allows objects to be removed in some well-defined order.
 * 
 * The removal order can be based on insertion order (eg, a FIFO queue or a
 * LIFO stack), on access order (eg, an LRU cache), on some arbitrary comparator
 * (eg, a priority queue) or on any other well-defined ordering.
 * 

 * Note that the removal order is not necessarily the same as the iteration
 * order.  A Buffer implementation may have equivalent removal
 * and iteration orders, but this is not required.
 * 
 * This interface does not specify any behavior for 
 * {@link Object#equals(Object)} and {@link Object#hashCode} methods.  It
 * is therefore possible for a Buffer implementation to also
 * also implement {@link java.util.List}, {@link java.util.Set} or 
 * {@link Bag}.
 *
 * @since Commons Collections 2.1
 * @version $Revision: 646777 $ $Date: 2008-04-10 14:33:15 +0200 (Thu, 10 Apr 2008) $
 * 
 * @author Avalon
 * @author Berin Loritsch
 * @author Paul Jack
 * @author Stephen Colebourne
 */
public interface Buffer extends Collection {

    /**
     * Gets and removes the next object from the buffer.
     *
     * @return the next object in the buffer, which is also removed
     * @throws BufferUnderflowException if the buffer is already empty
     */
    Object remove();

    /**
     * Gets the next object from the buffer without removing it.
     *
     * @return the next object in the buffer, which is not removed
     * @throws BufferUnderflowException if the buffer is empty
     */
    Object get();

}