/*

 * reserved comment block

 * DO NOT REMOVE OR ALTER!

 */

/*

 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more

 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with

 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.

 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0

 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with

 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at

 *

 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

 *

 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software

 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,

 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.

 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and

 * limitations under the License.

 */

package com.sun.org.apache.xml.internal.utils;

/**

 * A concrete class that implements this interface creates XMLString objects.

 */

public abstract class XMLStringFactory

{

  /**

   * Create a new XMLString from a Java string.

   *

   *

   * @param string Java String reference, which must be non-null.

   *

   * @return An XMLString object that wraps the String reference.

   */

  public abstract XMLString newstr(String string);

  /**

   * Create a XMLString from a FastStringBuffer.

   *

   *

   * @param string FastStringBuffer reference, which must be non-null.

   * @param start The start position in the array.

   * @param length The number of characters to read from the array.

   *

   * @return An XMLString object that wraps the FastStringBuffer reference.

   */

  public abstract XMLString newstr(FastStringBuffer string, int start,

                                   int length);

  /**

   * Create a XMLString from a FastStringBuffer.

   *

   *

   * @param string FastStringBuffer reference, which must be non-null.

   * @param start The start position in the array.

   * @param length The number of characters to read from the array.

   *

   * @return An XMLString object that wraps the FastStringBuffer reference.

   */

  public abstract XMLString newstr(char[] string, int start,

                                   int length);

  /**

   * Get a cheap representation of an empty string.

   *

   * @return An non-null reference to an XMLString that represents "".

   */

  public abstract XMLString emptystr();

}