How to restrict the object creation to only 5?

[navya nagaraj]

Lets have a class
public class example{

// members
//methods

}

How to restrict the object creation to only 5?
For example, we can restrict the object creation to only one by making the class as Singleton.
Is there a way to restrict the creation of an object to only 5 ?

[Steve Luke]

Yes. A Singleton is really just a Factory Method pattern applied to an class, holding one instance of the target class in a memory cache, where the cache size is one. There is no reason why you couldn't follow the same procedure, but have a cache size of 5.

The trick would be in distributing the instances fairly, if that is something you care about.

[Jam Rei]

public final class MyInstance {
	private static MyInstance instanceList[];

	public static MyInstance[] getMyInstance(int numberInstances) {
		instanceList = new MyInstance[numberInstances];
		for (int i = 0; i < numberInstances; i++) {
			instanceList[i] = new MyInstance();
		}
		return instanceList;
	}
}

public class TestInstanceRestriction {
	public static MyInstance instanceList[];

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		instanceList = MyInstance.getMyInstance(5);
		for (MyInstance instance : instanceList) {
			System.out.println(instance);
		}
	}
}

[Campbell Ritchie]

Please read this:

We're all here to learn, so when responding to others, please focus on helping them discover their own solutions, instead of simply providing answers.

… which appears on the title page for this forum. It does the OP no good at all to be given a complete answer, and we usually delete such posts. I shall leave it, however, because of the serious design errors concealed in it.

[Stephan van Hulst]

Hi Navya,

Why?