HP Integrity NonStop J-Series - Manual (Page 290)

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©Copyright 1996 Rogue Wave Software
Keep Related Methods Consistent
When you design classes that will be used with the Tools.h++ library, you may be tempted to
take short cuts, like providing a simplistic hash method, or operator<(), since you "know it will
never be used anyhow." Decisions like this can have disastrous maintenance consequences later.
Unless you have a very good reason, it makes sense to ensure, for example, that operator<(),
operator==(), compareTo(), and isEqual() are based on the same information. You must also be
sure that values which are isEqual() or == with each other have the same hash value, since
otherwise they will never be found if placed into a collection that uses hashing techniques. A
little extra effort at the beginning can pay big dividends in reduced debugging time later on!