source: josm/branch/0.5/src/org/openstreetmap/josm/data/osm/User.java

// License: GPL. Copyright 2007 by Immanuel Scholz and others
package org.openstreetmap.josm.data.osm;

import java.util.HashMap;

/** 
 * A simple class to keep a list of user names.
 * 
 * Instead of storing user names as strings with every OSM primtive, we store
 * a reference to an user object, and make sure that for each username there
 * is only one user object.
 * 
 * @author fred
 *
 */
public class User {

        /** storage for existing User objects. */
        private static HashMap<String,User> userMap = new HashMap<String,User>();
        
        /** the username. */
        public String name;
        
        /** private constructor, only called from get method. */
        private User(String name) {
                this.name = name;
        }
        
        /** returns a new or existing User object that represents the given name. */
        public static User get(String name) {
                User user = userMap.get(name);
                if (user == null) {
                        user = new User(name);
                        userMap.put(name, user);
                }
                return user;
        }
}