1 /*
2 * Copyright (C) 2021 The Guava Authors
3 *
4 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except
5 * in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
6 *
7 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
8 *
9 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License
10 * is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express
11 * or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under
12 * the License.
13 */
14
15 package com.google.common.base;
16
17 import com.google.common.annotations.GwtCompatible;
18 import javax.annotation.CheckForNull;
19 import org.checkerframework.checker.nullness.qual.Nullable;
20
21 /** A utility method to perform unchecked casts to suppress errors produced by nullness analyses. */
22 @GwtCompatible
23 @ElementTypesAreNonnullByDefault
24 final class NullnessCasts {
25 /**
26 * Accepts a {@code @Nullable T} and returns a plain {@code T}, without performing any check that
27 * that conversion is safe.
28 *
29 * <p>This method is intended to help with usages of type parameters that have {@linkplain
30 * ParametricNullness parametric nullness}. If a type parameter instead ranges over only non-null
31 * types (or if the type is a non-variable type, like {@code String}), then code should almost
32 * never use this method, preferring instead to call {@code requireNonNull} so as to benefit from
33 * its runtime check.
34 *
35 * <p>An example use case for this method is in implementing an {@code Iterator<T>} whose {@code
36 * next} field is lazily initialized. The type of that field would be {@code @Nullable T}, and the
37 * code would be responsible for populating a "real" {@code T} (which might still be the value
38 * {@code null}!) before returning it to callers. Depending on how the code is structured, a
39 * nullness analysis might not understand that the field has been populated. To avoid that problem
40 * without having to add {@code @SuppressWarnings}, the code can call this method.
41 *
42 * <p>Why <i>not</i> just add {@code SuppressWarnings}? The problem is that this method is
43 * typically useful for {@code return} statements. That leaves the code with two options: Either
44 * add the suppression to the whole method (which turns off checking for a large section of code),
45 * or extract a variable, and put the suppression on that. However, a local variable typically
46 * doesn't work: Because nullness analyses typically infer the nullness of local variables,
47 * there's no way to assign a {@code @Nullable T} to a field {@code T foo;} and instruct the
48 * analysis that that means "plain {@code T}" rather than the inferred type {@code @Nullable T}.
49 * (Even if supported added {@code @NonNull}, that would not help, since the problem case
50 * addressed by this method is the case in which {@code T} has parametric nullness -- and thus its
51 * value may be legitimately {@code null}.)
52 */
53 @ParametricNullness
54 @SuppressWarnings("nullness")
55 static <T extends @Nullable Object> T uncheckedCastNullableTToT(@CheckForNull T t) {
56 return t;
57 }
58
59 private NullnessCasts() {}
60 }