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Introduction to generic types in JDK 5.0

Brian Goetz (brian@quiotix.com), Principal Consultant, Quitox

Brian Goetz is a regular columnist on the developerWorks Java zone and has been a professional software developer and manager for the past 18 years. He is a Principal Consultant at Quiotix, a software development and consulting firm in Los Altos, CA. See Brian's published and upcoming articles in popular industry publications.

Summary: "This tutorial introduces generic types, a new feature in JDK 5.0 that lets you define classes with abstract type parameters that you specify at instantiation time. Generics increase the type safety and maintainability of large programs. Follow along with frequent developerWorks contributor and Java programming expert Brian Goetz, as he explains the motivation for adding generics to the Java language, details the syntax and semantics of generic types, and provides an introduction to using generics in your classes."

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Date: 07 Dec 2004
Level: Introductory

Activity: 26510 views
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Before you start

About this tutorial

JDK 5.0 (also called Java 5.0 or "Tiger") brings some major changes to the Java language. The most significant change is the addition of generic types (generics) -- support for defining classes with abstract type parameters that you specify at instantiation time. Generics offer substantial potential to increase the type safety and maintainability of large programs.

Generics interact synergistically with several of the other new language features in JDK 5.0, including the enhanced for loop (sometimes called the foreach or for/in loop), enumerations, and autoboxing.

This tutorial explains the motivation for adding generics to the Java language, details the syntax and semantics of generic types, and provides an introduction to using generics in your classes.

This tutorial is intended for intermediate and advanced Java developers who want to learn how the new language support for generics works. It is assumed that readers are familiar with developing interfaces and classes in the Java language, and with basic object-oriented design techniques.

The generics language feature is available only in JDK 5.0 and later. If you are developing software based on earlier JDK versions, you cannot use the generics features in your code until you migrate to JDK 5.0 or later.

Prerequisites

You must have a JDK 5.0 development environment available to you in order to use generics. You can download JDK 5.0 for free from the Sun Microsystems Web site.

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