/*
 * 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
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package org.apache.commons.configuration2;


An interface for decoding encoded values from a configuration source.

 Using this interface it is possible to store encoded or encrypted values in a configuration file. An implementing object can be assigned to a configuration object. The getEncodedString() method of the ImmutableConfiguration interface makes use of this instance to decode the value read from the configuration file before it is passed to the caller. 

By providing custom implementations of this interface an application can add
support for different kinds of encoded strings in configuration files.

Since:
2.0/**
 * <p>
 * An interface for decoding encoded values from a configuration source.
 * </p>
 * <p>
 * Using this interface it is possible to store encoded or encrypted values in a
 * configuration file. An implementing object can be assigned to a configuration
 * object. The {@code getEncodedString()} method of the
 * {@link ImmutableConfiguration} interface makes use of this instance to decode
 * the value read from the configuration file before it is passed to the caller.
 * </p>
 * <p>
 * By providing custom implementations of this interface an application can add
 * support for different kinds of encoded strings in configuration files.
 * </p>
 *
 * @since 2.0
 */
public interface ConfigurationDecoder
{
    
Decodes the specified string. This method is called with a string in
encoded form read from a configuration file. An implementation has to be
perform an appropriate decoding and return the result. This result is
passed to the calling application; so it should be in a readable form.
Params:
s – the string to be decoded (not null)
Returns:
the decoded string/**
     * Decodes the specified string. This method is called with a string in
     * encoded form read from a configuration file. An implementation has to be
     * perform an appropriate decoding and return the result. This result is
     * passed to the calling application; so it should be in a readable form.
     *
     * @param s the string to be decoded (not <b>null</b>)
     * @return the decoded string
     */
    String decode(String s);
}