/*
 * 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.cassandra.utils;

public interface SearchIterator<K, V>
{
    
Searches "forwards" (in direction of travel) in the iterator for the required key; if this or any key greater has already been returned by the iterator, the method may choose to return null, the correct or incorrect output, or fail an assertion. it is permitted to search past the end of the iterator, i.e. !hasNext() => next(?) == null 
Params:
key – to search for
Returns:
value associated with key, if present in direction of travel/**
     * Searches "forwards" (in direction of travel) in the iterator for the required key;
     * if this or any key greater has already been returned by the iterator, the method may
     * choose to return null, the correct or incorrect output, or fail an assertion.
     *
     * it is permitted to search past the end of the iterator, i.e. {@code !hasNext() => next(?) == null}
     *
     * @param key to search for
     * @return value associated with key, if present in direction of travel
     */
    public V next(K key);
}