Implementing an interface

[bugger]

Hello!

I am defining an interface.

interface Parser{

       void parseText(String buffer);
       void parseInt(String buffer);
       void parseFloat(String buffer);

}

Now the classes implementing this interface have to implement these methods. I want to keep the implementation of parseText(...) method as optional. The class implementing this interface have to implement parseInt(...) and parseFloat(...) but parseText(...) should be optional.

How this can be done?

Thanks a lot for yout time.
- Cheers

[jelly]

An interface is best thought of as a contract, if you implement the interface then you need to implement the methods. You _ could_ simply implement parseText as

parseText(...) {}

but that would confuse the calling code that would have expected some process to have taken place. If you do not want all classes to implement parseText then perhaps two interfaces

interface Parser{

void parseInt(String buffer);
void parseFloat(String buffer);

}

interface SuperParser extends Parser {
void parseText(String buffer);
}

The second interface is now a subinterface of the first and adds additional capability. A user could check what capabililty is available via the instanceOf keyword

if ( someObjRef instanceOf SuperParser) {
someObjRef.parseText(...);
}