/*
*
*
* Copyright 1990-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
* DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
* modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version
* 2 only, as published by the Free Software Foundation.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
* WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
* General Public License version 2 for more details (a copy is
* included at /legal/license.txt).
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
* version 2 along with this work; if not, write to the Free Software
* Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
* 02110-1301 USA
*
* Please contact Sun Microsystems, Inc., 4150 Network Circle, Santa
* Clara, CA 95054 or visit www.sun.com if you need additional
* information or have any questions.
*/
package com.sun.j2me.global;
/**
* The <code>StringDecomposer</code> interface defines requirements for a
* class which can be used to decompose / transform string into elements. The
* decomposition is done in steps (each call to the <code>getNextElement</code>
* method returns the next element of the decomposed string).
* <p>
* The <code>StringCollator</code> class uses this interface to be independent
* of a string normalizer.
*/
public interface StringDecomposer {
/** A value which represents the end of the decomposition. */
public static final int EOF_ELEMENT = -1;
/**
* Returns the next element of the decomposed string. The kind of returned
* element depends on the type of the "decomposer", but it has to be
* encoded as a single integer value.
*
* @return the decomposed element or <code>EOF_ELEMENT</code> when the
* decomposition is at the end
*/
public int getNextElement();
/**
* Restarts the decomposition.
*/
public void reset();
}