--- /dev/null
+package org.apache.lucene.util.fst;
+
+/**
+ * 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.
+ */
+
+import java.io.IOException;
+
+import org.apache.lucene.store.DataInput;
+import org.apache.lucene.store.DataOutput;
+
+/**
+ * Represents the outputs for an FST, providing the basic
+ * algebra needed for the FST.
+ *
+ * @lucene.experimental
+ */
+
+public abstract class Outputs<T> {
+
+ // TODO: maybe change this API to allow for re-use of the
+ // output instances -- this is an insane amount of garbage
+ // (new object per byte/char/int) if eg used during
+ // analysis
+
+ /** Eg common("foo", "foobar") -> "foo" */
+ public abstract T common(T output1, T output2);
+
+ /** Eg subtract("foobar", "foo") -> "bar" */
+ public abstract T subtract(T output, T inc);
+
+ /** Eg add("foo", "bar") -> "foobar" */
+ public abstract T add(T prefix, T output);
+
+ public abstract void write(T output, DataOutput out) throws IOException;
+
+ public abstract T read(DataInput in) throws IOException;
+
+ /** NOTE: this output is compared with == so you must
+ * ensure that all methods return the single object if
+ * it's really no output */
+ public abstract T getNoOutput();
+
+ public abstract String outputToString(T output);
+
+ public T merge(T first, T second) {
+ throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
+ }
+}