This class represents a composite name -- a sequence of component names spanning multiple namespaces.

  This class represents a composite name -- a sequence of component names spanning multiple namespaces. Each component is a string name from the namespace of a naming system. If the component comes from a hierarchical namespace, that component can be further parsed into its atomic parts by using the CompoundName class.

The components of a composite name are numbered. The indexes of a composite name with N components range from 0 up to, but not including, N. This range may be written as [0,N). The most significant component is at index 0. An empty composite name has no components.

JNDI Composite Name Syntax

JNDI defines a standard string representation for composite names. This representation is the concatenation of the components of a composite name from left to right using the component separator (a forward slash character (/)) to separate each component. The JNDI syntax defines the following meta characters:

• escape (backward slash \),
• quote characters (single (') and double quotes (")), and
• component separator (forward slash character (/)).

Any occurrence of a leading quote, an escape preceding any meta character, an escape at the end of a component, or a component separator character in an unquoted component must be preceded by an escape character when that component is being composed into a composite name string. Alternatively, to avoid adding escape characters as described, the entire component can be quoted using matching single quotes or matching double quotes. A single quote occurring within a double-quoted component is not considered a meta character (and need not be escaped), and vice versa.

When two composite names are compared, the case of the characters is significant.

A leading component separator (the composite name string begins with a separator) denotes a leading empty component (a component consisting of an empty string). A trailing component separator (the composite name string ends with a separator) denotes a trailing empty component. Adjacent component separators denote an empty component.

Composite Name Examples

This table shows examples of some composite names. Each row shows the string form of a composite name and its corresponding structural form (CompositeName).

String Name	CompositeName
""	{} (the empty name == new CompositeName("") == new CompositeName())
"x"	{"x"}
"x/y"	{"x", "y"}
"x/"	{"x", ""}
"/x"	{"", "x"}
"/"	{""}
"//"	{"", ""}
"/x/"	{"", "x", ""}
"x//y"	{"x", "", "y"}

Composition Examples

Here are some composition examples. The right column shows composing string composite names while the left column shows composing the corresponding CompositeNames. Notice that composing the string forms of two composite names simply involves concatenating their string forms together.

String Names	CompositeNames
"x/y" + "/" = x/y/	{"x", "y"} + {""} = {"x", "y", ""}
"" + "x" = "x"	{} + {"x"} = {"x"}
"/" + "x" = "/x"	{""} + {"x"} = {"", "x"}
"x" + "" + "" = "x"	{"x"} + {} + {} = {"x"}

Multithreaded Access

A CompositeName instance is not synchronized against concurrent multithreaded access. Multiple threads trying to access and modify a CompositeName should lock the object.