AST root node: override child

[Stephen Siegel]

The child method defined in ASTNodeIF should be overridden in RootNodeIF as follows:

	public GlobalScopeNodeIF child(int index) throws NoSuchElementException;

This is assuming all children of a root node are global scope nodes.

Similar actions should be taken in similar circumstances, where a sub-class is known to return a sub-type of the return type of a method defined in a class.

[zirkel]

As it is implemented right now, the RootNodeIF has a child that is a SequenceNodeIF<GlobalScopeNodeIF>. Should this be changed so that the global scope nodes are the direct children of the root?

[Stephen Siegel]

I just noticed that, and was about to say:

Actually, I see now that the root node has one child, which is a sequence node of GlobalScopeNodeIF. Could someone please clarify that in the javadocs for RootNodeIF.

The overridden method should be:

public SequenceNodeIF<GlobalScopeNodeIF> child(int index) throws NoSuchElementException;

And the comments should clearly indicate that index must be 0, etc.

[Stephen Siegel]

Actually, instead of overriding the child method, it would make more sense and be more consistent with similar cases to add a new method to RootNodeIF

public SequenceNodeIF<GlobalScopeNodeIF> getGlobalScopeSequenceNode();

or something like that. It is equivalent to getChild(0).

[zirkel]

We actually already have a method for that:

	SequenceNodeIF<GlobalScopeNodeIF> globalScopeNodes();

I just noticed that this is missing the "public" modifier, though.