Generic class names to avoid

Overview

Java (Oracle Java update 2) has many classes with the same generic name. To avoid further confusion, I suggest avoiding these names if you can.

Most repeated

The following class names are repeated, 19 Handler, 16 Messages, 13 Util, 10 Element, 8 Attribute, 7 SecuritySupport, 7 Node, 6 Provider, 6 Header, 6 FactoryFinder, 6 Document. 5 SOAPBinding, 5 Repository, 5 Ref, 5 ORB, 5 Name, 5 Constants, 5 Connection, 5 Comment, 5 Binding, 5 Attributes,
This excludes the Apache XML library which repeats many names. If you include these libraries there are 26 classes called SecuritySupport.

Four times

Window, Version, Utility, Timer, Text, State, Signature, ServiceName, ServiceConfigurationError, Service, ResourceLoader, Queue, Policy, Parser, Operation, NativeLibLoader, Message, Label, JSObject, GetPropertyAction, FactoryFinder$ConfigurationError, Event, ConstantPool, AppletAudioClip, Action,

Three times

XMLWriter, Wrapper, WildcardTypeImpl, Visitor, Validator, Types, TypeMismatch, TypeInfo, Type, Trace, Token, Timestamp, Target, Symbol, StyleSheet, SOAPFault, SOAPConstants, Scope, Schema, ResourceManager, Resource, Resolver, Request, Reference, Properties, ProgressMonitor, PrincipalImpl, Principal, Port, PooledConnection, Pool, Pipe, Patcher, ParseException, OutputStream, ObjectStreamField, Navigator, NamespaceSupport$Context, NamespaceSupport, MimeType, MemoryCache, MarshalException, Manifest, Main, Location, List, JarVerifier, IOR, Invoker, InvalidName, Introspector, InputStream, Import, ImageCache, HTMLDocument, HTMLCollection, Headers, FinalArrayList, Filter, FileSystem, FactoryImpl, Extension, EventListener, ErrorHandler, Entity, EncryptedPrivateKeyInfo, Delegate, DataSource, CurrentOperations, CurrentHelper, Current, Counter, Context, ContentType, Config, Code, CharacterData, Certificate, CacheTable, Cache, Bridge, Base64, Authenticator, AttributeList, ArrayType, Array, AppletAudioClip$1, Annotation,

Appearing twice

Too many to mention.

Comments

  1. Anonymous22 January 2012 at 00:57

    This is a nice example of how recycling names creates confusion...

    I typically try to stay away from both generic words and names used in the core libraries, even when they appear only once. At the first glance this may sound a bit extreme and hard to do, but I find it fairly easy to check if the name is already used in the core libraries, and if it is, simple to replace it with a more specific composite name. For example, I use the namne ClusterEventListener instead of the generic EventListener to avoid confusion. My names tend to be longer as a result, but I found this a relatively small price to pay.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Peter Lawrey22 January 2012 at 09:56

    One of the class which was rather long in Java 6 was renamed in Java 7.

    com.sun.java.swing.plaf.nimbus.InternalFrameInternalFrameTitlePaneInternalFrameTitlePaneMaximizeButtonWindowNotFocusedState

    I suspected it might be a short poem.

    Internal Frame

    Internal Frame

    Title Pane

    Internal Frame



    Title Pane

    Maximise Button

    Window Not Focused State

    ReplyDelete

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