Interface SymbolTable

src/main/java/com/amazon/ion/SymbolTable.java:48–299

A symbol table maps symbols between their textual form and an integer ID used in the binary encoding. WARNING: This interface should not be implemented or extended by code outside of this library. There are two kinds of symbol tables: shared and local . With that, the

 * @see <a href="https://amazon-ion.github.io/ion-docs/docs/symbols.html">Ion Symbols page</a>
 */
public interface SymbolTable
{
    /**
     * Indicates that a symbol's integer ID could not be determined.  That's
     * generally the case when constructing value instances that are not yet
     * contained by a datagram.
     */
    public final static int UNKNOWN_SYMBOL_ID = -1;


    /**
     * Gets the unique name of this symbol table.
     *
     * @return the unique name, or {@code null} if {@link #isLocalTable()}.
     */
    public String getName();


    /**
     * Gets the version of this symbol table.
     *
     * @return at least one, or zero if {@link #isLocalTable()}.
     */
    public int getVersion();


    /**
     * Determines whether this symbol table is local, and therefore unnamed
     * and unversioned.
     * <p>
     * If this method returns {@code true}, then both {@link #isSharedTable()}
     * and {@link #isSystemTable()} will return {@code false}.
     */
    public boolean isLocalTable();

    /**
     * Determines whether this symbol table is shared, and therefore named,
     * versioned, and {@linkplain #isReadOnly() read-only}.
     * <p>
     * If this method returns {@code true}, then {@link #isLocalTable()}
     * will return {@code false}.
     */
    public boolean isSharedTable();

    /**
     * Determines whether this instance is substituting for an imported
     * shared table for which no exact match was found in the catalog.
     * Such tables are not authoritative and may not even have any symbol text
     * at all (as is the case when no version of an imported table is found).
     * <p>
     * Substitute tables are always shared, non-system tables.
     *
     */
    public boolean isSubstitute();

    /**
     * Determines whether this symbol table is a system symbol table, and
     * therefore shared, named, versioned, and