001/**
002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
003 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
004 * distributed with this work for additional information
005 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
006 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
007 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
008 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
009 *
010 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
011 *
012 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
013 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
014 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
015 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
016 * limitations under the License.
017 */
018
019package org.apache.hadoop.io;
020
021import java.util.Comparator;
022
023import org.apache.hadoop.classification.InterfaceAudience;
024import org.apache.hadoop.classification.InterfaceStability;
025import org.apache.hadoop.io.serializer.DeserializerComparator;
026
027/**
028 * <p>
029 * A {@link Comparator} that operates directly on byte representations of
030 * objects.
031 * </p>
032 * @param <T>
033 * @see DeserializerComparator
034 */
035@InterfaceAudience.Public
036@InterfaceStability.Stable
037public interface RawComparator<T> extends Comparator<T> {
038
039  /**
040   * Compare two objects in binary.
041   * b1[s1:l1] is the first object, and b2[s2:l2] is the second object.
042   * 
043   * @param b1 The first byte array.
044   * @param s1 The position index in b1. The object under comparison's starting index.
045   * @param l1 The length of the object in b1.
046   * @param b2 The second byte array.
047   * @param s2 The position index in b2. The object under comparison's starting index.
048   * @param l2 The length of the object under comparison in b2.
049   * @return An integer result of the comparison.
050   */
051  public int compare(byte[] b1, int s1, int l1, byte[] b2, int s2, int l2);
052
053}