Description Simon Archer 2008-03-13 17:39:07 EDT

While trying to reduce our string footprint, we saw a case where the code:

  value = ":" + 9443 + "/service";

was replaced with:

  value = ':' + 9443 + "/service";  //$NON-NLS-1$

The result of these expressions are quite different.  The first sets value to ":9443/service", while the second sets value to "9501/service".  This happens because the colon character's integer value is added to 9443, before being concatenated with "/service".

It would be helpful to have a JDT compiler warning for the case where a character is being added to another character, or a number.  Ideally the compiler warning would detect only the case where a character is involved in integer addition, followed by concatenation with a string, but I understand if that is not feasible.

A common work around for such as problem is to do the following:

  value = "" + ':' + 9443 + "/service";  //$NON-NLS-1$ //$NON-NLS-2$

But this is not ideal, since it introduces yet another string, which also needs to be NON-NLS'd.