jakarta commons provides a library to do common tasks in  java

e.g.:

import org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils;
import org.apache.commons.lang.WordUtils;

String test = "This is a test of the abbreviation."

String test2 = "Test"

System.out.println( StringUtils.abbreviate( test, 10 ) );

System.out.println( StringUtils.abbreviate( test2, 10 ) );

oooh! cool header:

public String createHeader( String title ) {

    int width = 30;

    // Construct heading using StringUtils: repeat( ), center( ), and join( )

    String stars = StringUtils.repeat( "*", width);

    String centered = StringUtils.center( title, width, "*" );

    String heading = 

        StringUtils.join(new Object[]{stars, centered, stars}, "\n");

    return heading;

}

Here's the output of createHeader("TEST"):

******************************

************ TEST ************

******************************

i like the text manipulations the best:
-------------------------------------
reverse sentence:

public Sentence reverseSentence(String sentence) {

    String reversed = StringUtils.chomp( sentence, "." );

    reversed = StringUtils.reverseDelimited( reversed, ' ' );

    reversed = reversed + ".";

    return reversed;

} 

....

String sentence = "I am Susan."

String reversed = reverseSentence( sentence ) );

System.out.println( sentence );


soundex - generated code based on sound of word (lie and lye would have same code.)

http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/soundex.html

beans (as i understand) are just a java name for an object?

person bean:
public class Person {

    private String name;

    private Integer age;

    private Job job;



    public String getName( ) { return name; }

    public void setName(String name) { this.name = name; }



    public Integer getAge( ) { return age; }

    public void setAge(Integer age) { this.age = age; }



    public Job getJob( ) { return job; }

    public void setJob(Job job) { this.job = job; }

}
-------------------------------------------------------
then using the library:

import org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtils;



Person person = new Person( );

person.setName( "Alex" );    



String name = (String) PropertyUtils.getSimpleProperty( person, "name" );

System.out.println( name );
-------------------------------------------------------

"Comparator encapsulates logic to compare two objects, and Iterator encapsulates logic used to iterate over a collection of objects. "

comparator chains for sorting:"

ComparatorChain comparatorChain = new ComparatorChain( );

comparatorChain.addComparator( new BeanComparator( "lastName" ) );

comparatorChain.addComparator( new BeanComparator( "firstName" ) );

comparatorChain.addComparator( new BeanComparator( "age" ), true );
"

digester turns xml elements into objects

touching a file changes its timestamp