Character coersion

Question

I have an interesting problem, using JSTL 1.1.2. I have a bean method which provides a Map of Character objects, like this:
private Map myMap;
...snip...
   Character myChar = new Character('X');
   myMap.put("hello",myChar);
...snip...
public Map getMap() {
   return myMap;
}Now, I can display any part of the map simply in JSTL:
<p>Value is : ${somebean.map['hello']}</p>which works just fine and displays the Character value of X correctly.
HOWEVER... when I try and compare the character to a constant value...:
<c:if test="${somebean.map['hello'] == 'X'}"><p>Something.</p></c:if>...then I get a runtime exception:
javax.servlet.jsp.el.ELException: An exception occured trying to convert String "X" to type "java.lang.Long"Why is it trying to convert the constant value 'X' to a Long? What can I do to make it convert it to a Character instead so that it does the comparison properly?
I have tried using eq instead of == but this makes no difference.

Answer 1

I cannot change the underlying map class. It is being used to represent a record in a table in an Oracle database - Characters represent char columns, Strings for varchars, Doubles for numbers, etc. I need to be able to pass single character values, whether they be char primitives or Character objects, between the bean and JSTL.
JSTL is apparently coercing my Character objects to Long objects before attempting to compare them to a String constant. Wouldn't it be more logical to attempt to coerce the String constant into a Character? Is there any way to obtain this behaviour and override the Long conversion?