# The Universe of Discourse

Thu, 14 May 2009

Product types in Java
Recently I wanted a Java function that would return two Person objects. Java functions return only a single value. I could, of course, make a class that encapsulates two Persons:

        class Persons2 {
Person personA, personB;

Persons2(Person a, Person b) {
personA = a; personB = b;
}

Person getPersonA() { return personA; }
...
}

Java is loathsome in its verbosity, and this sort of monkey code is Java's verbosity at its most loathsome. So I did not do this.

Haskell functions return only one value also, but this is no limitation, because Haskell has product types. And starting in Java 5, the Java type system is a sort of dented, bolted-on version of the type systems that eventually evolved into the Haskell type system. But product types are pretty simple. I can make a generic product type in Java:

        class Pair<A,B> {
A a;  B b;

Pair(A a, B b) { this.a = a; this.b = b; }

A fst() { return a; }
B snd() { return b; }
}

Then I can declare my function to return a Pair<Person,Person>:

        Pair<Person,Person> findMatch() {
...
return new Pair(husband, wife);
}

Okay, that worked just fine. The boilerplate is still there, but you only have to do it once. This trick seems sufficiently useful that I can imagine that I will use it again, and that someone else reading this will want to use it too.

I've been saying for a while that up through version 1.4, Java was a throwback to the languages of the 1970s, but that with the introduction of generics in Java 5, it took a giant step forward into the 1980s. I think this is a point of evidence in favor of that claim.

I wonder why this class isn't in the standard library. I was not the first person to think of doing this; web search turns up several others, who also wonder why this class isn't in the standard library.

I wrote a long, irrelevant coda regarding my use of the identifiers husband and wife in the example, but, contrary to my usual practice, I will publish it another day.

[ Addendum 20090517: Here's the long, irrelevant coda. ]

I gratefully acknowledge the gift of Petr Kiryakov. Thank you!