/* Annotation.java - Base interface for all annotations
   Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation

This file is part of GNU Classpath.

GNU Classpath is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
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permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an
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package java.lang.annotation;

/**
 * This is the common interface for all annotations.  Note that classes
 * that implement this class manually are not classed as annotations, and
 * that this interface does not define an annotation type in itself.
 *
 * @author Tom Tromey (tromey@redhat.com)
 * @author Andrew John Hughes (gnu_andrew@member.fsf.org)
 * @since 1.5
 */
public interface Annotation
{

  /**
   * Returns the type of this annotation.
   *
   * @return the class of which this annotation is an instance.
   */
  /* FIXME[GENERICS]: Should return Class<? extends Annotation> */
  Class annotationType();

  /**
   * <p>
   * Returns true if the supplied object is equivalent to this annotation.
   * For this property to hold, the following must be true of <code>o</code>:
   * </p>
   * <ul>
   * <li>The object is also an instance of the same annotation type.</li>
   * <li>The members of the supplied annotation are equal to those of this
   * annotation, according to the following:
   * <ul>
   * <li>If the members are <code>float</code>s, then, for floats
   * <code>x</code> and <code>y</code>, 
   * <code>Float.valueOf(x).equals(Float.valueOf(y)</code> must return
   * true.  This differs from the usual (<code>==</code>) comparison
   * in that <code>NaN</code> is considered equal to itself and positive
   * and negative zero are seen as different.</li>
   * <li>Likewise, if the members are <code>double</code>s, then, for doubles
   * <code>x</code> and <code>y</code>, 
   * <code>Double.valueOf(x).equals(Double.valueOf(y)</code> must return
   * true.  This differs from the usual (<code>==</code>) comparison
   * in that <code>NaN</code> is considered equal to itself and positive
   * and negative zero are seen as different.</li>
   * <li>Strings, classes, enumerations and annotations are considered
   * equal according to the <code>equals()</code> implementation for these
   * types.</li>
   * <li>Arrays are considered equal according to <code>Arrays.equals()</code>
   * </li>
   * <li>Any remaining types are considered equal using <code>==</code>.</li>
   * </li>
   * </ul>
   *
   * @param o the object to compare with this annotation.
   * @return true if the supplied object is an annotation with equivalent
   *         members.
   */
  boolean equals(Object o);

  /**
   * <p>
   * Returns the hash code of the annotation.  This is computed as the
   * sum of the hash codes of the annotation's members.
   * </p>
   * <p>
   * The hash code of a member of the annotation is the result of XORing
   * the hash code of its value with the result of multiplying the hash code
   * of its name by 127.  Formally, if the value is <code>v</code> and the
   * name is <code>n</code>, the hash code of the member is
   * v.hashCode() XOR (127 * String.hashCode(n)).  <code>v.hashCode()</code>
   * is defined as follows:
   * </p>
   * <ul>
   * <li>The hash code of a primitive value (i.e. <code>byte</code>,
   * <code>char</code>, <code>double</code>, <code>float</code>,
   * <code>int</code>, <code>long</code>, <code>short</code> and
   * <code>boolean</code>) is the hash code obtained from its corresponding
   * wrapper class using <code>valueOf(v).hashCode()</code>, where
   * <code>v</code> is the primitive value.</li>
   * <li>The hash code of an enumeration, string, class or other annotation
   * is obtained using <code>v.hashCode()</code>.</li>
   * <li>The hash code of an array is computed using
   * <code>Arrays.hashCode(v)</code>.</li>
   * </ul>
   *
   * @return the hash code of the annotation, computed as the sum of its
   *         member hashcodes.
   */
  int hashCode();

  /**
   * Returns a textual representation of the annotation.  This is
   * implementation-dependent, but is expected to include the classname
   * and the names and values of each member.
   *
   * @return a textual representation of the annotation.
   */
  String toString();
}