CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2007/wiki1b 6 aa

Take a case of the Singleton pattern and implement it as succinctly as possible in Ruby and Java.Compare the two implementations in terms of clarity and succinctness.The example should be a "real-world" example. While it may be grossly oversimplified for the purpose of illustration, it should not be totally contrived (i.e., should not raise the question, Why would anyone ever want to do that?).

http://www.beginner-java-tutorial.com/singleton.html http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/singleton/rdoc/index.html

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Example

Let's take the example of the Earth. Because we only have one earth,it is appropriate to implement the Earth class in singleton.In side the class, currentCondition describes the state (current condition) of the earth.

Ruby Implementation

require 'Singleton'

class Earth
  include Singleton  # include singleton mixin
  attr_accessor :currentCondition
end

Java Implementation

public class Earth {
	  private Earth()
	  {
	   // override the contructor to make it private
	  }
	  private static Earth ref;

	  // make the method thread safe
	  public synchronized static Earth getEarth()
	  {
	    if (ref == null)
	        // lazy initialization
	        ref = new Earth();		
	    return ref;
	  }

	  public Object clone()
		throws CloneNotSupportedException
	  {
	    throw new CloneNotSupportedException(); 
	  }

	  private String currentCondition="I was beatiful and clean";
	  
	  public String getCurrentCondition(){
		  return currentCondition;
	  }
	  
	  public void setCurrentCondition(String str){
		  currentCondition=str;
	  }
	  
	}