Homework 20: Exceptional Comparison

Due: Wednesday, 29 September 2004

Suppose we are creating a class, Assistant, that performs many common activities. One such activity is, given two objects, a and b, to determine which of the two is smaller. Suppose we call that the corresponding method min.

/**
 * Find the smaller of two comparable objects.
 */
public Comparable min(Comparable a, Comparable b)

Through analysis, we determine that

• min should return a if a thinks it is smaller than b and b thinks it is larger than a.
• min should return b if b thinks it is smaller than a and a thinks it is larger than b.
• If both a and b report that they are equal, return either.
• If either a or b throws an exception upon being asked to compare the other value, min should throw an IncomparableException (which you must write).
• If you get inconsistent orders from a and b, min should throw an InconsistentException (which you must write).

Implement and test min.