Class Preconditions


  • @ParametersAreNonnullByDefault
    public final class Preconditions
    extends Object
    Static convenience methods that help a method or constructor check whether it was invoked correctly (whether its preconditions have been met). These methods generally accept a boolean expression which is expected to be true (or in the case of checkNotNull, an object reference which is expected to be non-null). When false (or null) is passed instead, the Preconditions method throws an unchecked exception, which helps the calling method communicate to its caller that that caller has made a mistake. Warning: The goal of this class is to improve readability of code, but in some circumstances this may come at a significant performance cost. Remember that parameter values for message construction must all be computed eagerly, and autoboxing and varargs array creation may happen as well, even when the precondition check then succeeds (as it should almost always do in production). In some circumstances these wasted CPU cycles and allocations can add up to a real problem.