The standard Java libraries fail to provide enough methods for manipulation of its core classes. The Lang Component provides these extra methods.
The Lang Component provides a host of helper utilities for the java.lang API, notably String manipulation methods, basic numerical methods, object reflection, creation and serialization, and System properties. Additionally it contains an inheritable enum type, an exception structure that supports multiple types of nested-Exceptions, basic enhancements to java.util.Date and a series of utlities dedicated to help with building methods, such as hashCode, toString and equals.
The latest release of Apache Jakarta Commons Lang is version 2.0. It is available (from mirrors) in binary and source downloads. The release notes explain all of the changes and bugs that were fixed between 1.0.1 and 2.0. In addition, JDiff has been used to create a report on the differences between 1.0.1 and 2.0.
An alphabetical list of the packages may be found in the lang status document.
The JavaDoc API documents are available online.
Bugs may be reported via the Bugzilla Management system. The following links may prove useful: