/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */

package org.apache.samoa.moa;

import java.io.Serializable;

/**
 * Interface implemented by classes in MOA, so that all are serializable, can produce copies of their objects, and can
 * measure its memory size. They also give a string description.
 * 
 * @author Richard Kirkby (rkirkby@cs.waikato.ac.nz)
 * @version $Revision: 7 $
 */
public interface MOAObject extends Serializable {

  /**
   * Gets the memory size of this object.
   * 
   * @return the memory size of this object
   */
  public int measureByteSize();

  /**
   * This method produces a copy of this object.
   * 
   * @return a copy of this object
   */
  public MOAObject copy();

  /**
   * Returns a string representation of this object. Used in <code>AbstractMOAObject.toString</code> to give a string
   * representation of the object.
   * 
   * @param sb
   *          the stringbuilder to add the description
   * @param indent
   *          the number of characters to indent
   */
  public void getDescription(StringBuilder sb, int indent);
}