/*
 *  YALE - Yet Another Learning Environment
 *  Copyright (C) 2001-2004
 *      Simon Fischer, Ralf Klinkenberg, Ingo Mierswa, 
 *          Katharina Morik, Oliver Ritthoff
 *      Artificial Intelligence Unit
 *      Computer Science Department
 *      University of Dortmund
 *      44221 Dortmund,  Germany
 *  email: yale-team@lists.sourceforge.net
 *  web:   http://yale.cs.uni-dortmund.de/
 *
 *  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
 *  modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as 
 *  published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
 *  License, or (at your option) any later version. 
 *
 *  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
 *  WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 *  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
 *  General Public License for more details.
 *
 *  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 *  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
 *  Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307
 *  USA.
 */
package edu.udo.cs.yale.operator;

/** A value contains a key and a description. The current value can be asked by the experiment log operator. */
public abstract class Value {

    /** The key which can be asked by the experiment log operator. */
    private String key;
    /** The human readable description of this value. */
    private String description;
    /** Indicates if this value should be documented. */
    private boolean documented = true;

    /** Creates a new Value object with the given key as name and the given description. This value will be documented. */
    public Value(String key, String description) {
	this(key, description, true);
    }

    /** Creates a new Value object. */
    public Value(String key, String description, boolean documented) {
	this.key         = key;
	this.description = description;
	this.documented = documented;
    }

    /** Returns a human readable description. */
    public String getDescription() { 
	return description; 
    }

    /** Returns the key. */
    public String getKey() { 
	return key; 
    }

    /** Returns true if this value should be documented. */
    public boolean isDocumented() {
	return documented;
    }

    /** Returns the current value which can be logged by the experiment log operator. */
    public abstract double getValue();

}