com.google.common.base.NullnessCasts Maven / Gradle / Ivy
/*
* Copyright (C) 2021 The Guava Authors
*
* Licensed 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 com.google.common.base;
import com.google.common.annotations.GwtCompatible;
import javax.annotation.CheckForNull;
import org.checkerframework.checker.nullness.qual.Nullable;
/** A utility method to perform unchecked casts to suppress errors produced by nullness analyses. */
@GwtCompatible
@ElementTypesAreNonnullByDefault
final class NullnessCasts {
/**
* Accepts a {@code @Nullable T} and returns a plain {@code T}, without performing any check that
* that conversion is safe.
*
* This method is intended to help with usages of type parameters that have {@linkplain
* ParametricNullness parametric nullness}. If a type parameter instead ranges over only non-null
* types (or if the type is a non-variable type, like {@code String}), then code should almost
* never use this method, preferring instead to call {@code requireNonNull} so as to benefit from
* its runtime check.
*
*
An example use case for this method is in implementing an {@code Iterator} whose {@code
* next} field is lazily initialized. The type of that field would be {@code @Nullable T}, and the
* code would be responsible for populating a "real" {@code T} (which might still be the value
* {@code null}!) before returning it to callers. Depending on how the code is structured, a
* nullness analysis might not understand that the field has been populated. To avoid that problem
* without having to add {@code @SuppressWarnings}, the code can call this method.
*
* Why not just add {@code SuppressWarnings}? The problem is that this method is
* typically useful for {@code return} statements. That leaves the code with two options: Either
* add the suppression to the whole method (which turns off checking for a large section of code),
* or extract a variable, and put the suppression on that. However, a local variable typically
* doesn't work: Because nullness analyses typically infer the nullness of local variables,
* there's no way to assign a {@code @Nullable T} to a field {@code T foo;} and instruct the
* analysis that that means "plain {@code T}" rather than the inferred type {@code @Nullable T}.
* (Even if supported added {@code @NonNull}, that would not help, since the problem case
* addressed by this method is the case in which {@code T} has parametric nullness -- and thus its
* value may be legitimately {@code null}.)
*/
@ParametricNullness
@SuppressWarnings("nullness")
static T uncheckedCastNullableTToT(@CheckForNull T t) {
return t;
}
private NullnessCasts() {}
}