CHAPTER 14Generics

Since the original 1.0 release in 1995, many new features have been added to Java. The one that has had the most profound impact is generics. Introduced by JDK 5, generics changed Java in two important ways. First, it added a new syntactical element to the language. Second, it caused changes to many of the classes and methods in the core API. Today, generics are an integral part of Java programming, and a solid understanding of this important feature is required. It is examined here in detail.

Through the use of generics, it is possible to create classes, interfaces, and methods that will work in a type-safe manner with various kinds of data. Many algorithms are logically the same no matter what type of data they are being ...

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