equls/hashCode in MasterExam possible error

Hi all,
In the MasterExam shipped with the K&B 5.0 book there is a question concerning the equals() and hashCode() contract:

Answer is C & D.

I'm fine with C but D??
Think about it. Say that you have two SortOf objects a & b, initialized as follows:

a.equals(b) would then return true (as 3*2*2 == 4*1*3). According to the contract a.hashCode() and b.hashCode() must therefore return the same value. But they don't: a.hashCode() is 4*1=4 and b.hashCode() is 3*2=6!!

It would be nice if someone could verify this and tell me if I'm right or if I've overlooked something.
Thanks.
[ March 15, 2006: Message edited by: Daniel Svensson ]

Are you sure they are trying to multiply "*" them together.

How do you multiply an int with a String.

Are you sure it isn't "+"?

Mark

I tend to agree with Daniel. I think the problem in the original statement is the author might not have taken into account that some integers can be written as a product in different ways.

Dang

Okay, let's turn this into a "learning opportunity"

I'm not thrilled with this, but how about if d). was something like this:

return Long.toString(((SortOf)o).code.length() * ((SortOf)o).bal) + ((SortOf(o).rate == blah,blah...

Got any better ideas?

Bert

I guess the issue bowls down to the following propositions.

Proposition 1: If a,b,c, and a1,b1,c1 are integers and a*b*c = a1*b1*c1, then a*b=a1*b1.

This proposition is shown to be false with the sets of numbers 2,3,2 and 4,1,3.

Proposition 2: If a,b,c and a1,b1,c1 are integers and a*b+c = a1*b1+c1,
then a*b=a1*b1.

This proposition can also be shown to be false with the sets of numbers 2,4,1, and 2,3,3.

[ March 15, 2006: Message edited by: Keith Lynn ]
[ March 15, 2006: Message edited by: Keith Lynn ]

[BB]: Got any better ideas?

1: Just make the answer C only.

2: Replace D with a more traditional equals method like

or

or even

3: Replace D with the nontraditional but valid

----

I'd also note that in fact, none of these methods are truly valid except "return this == other;". The reason is that they all can throw ClassCastException or NullPointerException if reference o is the wrong class, or null. The correct response would be to simply return false. This could be fixed with an instanceof check, e.g.:

[ March 15, 2006: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

so far i like jim's option 3 the most...

Thanks for your input. It's good to know that I wasn't on the wrong track after all.

Daniel