// 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;
	}
}