Repeated entries in JComboBox

Question

The problem I encountered is that while JComboBox can display repeated items, it doesn't allow selecting them. Try selecting item #2 in the attached example. Any suggestions?
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.awt.event.ItemEvent;
import java.awt.event.ItemListener;
import javax.swing.JComboBox;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
public class ComboTest extends JFrame
     private JComboBox m_name;
     public ComboTest()
          String[] values = {"item 0 is unique","items 1 and 2 are identical","items 1 and 2 are identical","item 3 is unique"};
          m_name = new JComboBox(values);
          m_name.addItemListener(new ItemListener()
                    public void itemStateChanged(ItemEvent e)
                         System.out.println("itemStateChanged, new index = "+m_name.getSelectedIndex()+" >>>"+e.paramString());
          m_name.addActionListener(new ActionListener()
                    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
                         System.out.println("actionPerformed, new index = "+m_name.getSelectedIndex()+" >>>"+e.paramString());
          m_name.setSelectedIndex(-1);
          m_name.setEditable(true);
          getContentPane().add(m_name);
          setSize(250,60);
     public static void main(String[] args)
          ComboTest mm = new ComboTest();
          mm.show();

Answer 1

I would agree with earlier posters who suggested that putting repeated entries into the JComboBox is probably not much help. It seems better to wrap People up in a class which contains some unique identifier, even if the toString() method can return duplicates.
You can get what you want, but you will have to write a custom ComboBoxModel, since DefaultComboBoxModel delegates storage to java.util.Vector, which returns the first index that matches when you use indexOf. See http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/util/Vector.html#indexOf(java.lang.Object) for more details.
There are plenty of problems in Java. I don't think this is one of them.
-- Scott