title: What's Adapter.getItem() for?
body: <p>I am writing a custom adapter for use with a <code>ListView</code>.</p>
  
  <p>The <code>Adapter</code> interface includes a <code>getItem()</code> method which returns, according to the docs, an <code>Object</code> as  </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>the data item associated with the specified position in the data set.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>What's this object supposed to be? I can only imagine the <code>ListView</code> wants to call either <code>toString</code> or <code>equals</code> on it, since there's not much else you can do with a raw <code>Object</code>. But I don't have a convenient <code>Object</code> I can return, and in any event I'm overriding <code>getView</code> so the ListView has no need for a String from my dataset anyway.</p>
  
  <p>Can I just return <code>null</code> or something else completely irrelevant?</p>