org.eclipse.compare.structuremergeviewer.IStructureComparator Maven / Gradle / Ivy
/*******************************************************************************
* Copyright (c) 2000, 2011 IBM Corporation and others.
* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
* are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
* which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
* http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
*
* Contributors:
* IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation
*******************************************************************************/
package org.eclipse.compare.structuremergeviewer;
/**
* Interface used to compare hierarchical structures.
* It is used by the differencing engine.
*
* Clients typically implement this interface in an adaptor class which
* wrappers the objects to be compared.
*
* @see org.eclipse.compare.ResourceNode
* @see Differencer
*/
public interface IStructureComparator {
/**
* Returns an iterator for all children of this object or null
* if there are no children.
*
* @return an array with all children of this object, or an empty array if there are no children
*/
Object[] getChildren();
/**
* Returns whether some other object is "equal to" this one
* with respect to a structural comparison. For example, when comparing
* Java class methods, equals would return true
* if two methods have the same signature (the argument names and the
* method body might differ).
*
* @param other the reference object with which to compare
* @return true if this object is the same as the other argument; false otherwise
* @see java.lang.Object#equals
*/
@Override
boolean equals(Object other);
}