Generics Doubts

[Kumaravadivel Subramani]

Hi All,
Can anyone explain me about generics in java? I've quite comfortable with normal generics concept and when the generics with wild character comes I going to hell.
mainly the three topics I've alot of questions after read more articles about this.

[Soumyajit Hazra]

Check the link Generics
Go through it and then if you have any specific question then ask.

[Shanky Sohar]

You must have to read the chapter 7 of K & B book atleast 2 or 3 times.
Then you will get to understand the generics

[Shanky Sohar]

And sorry I didnot noticed earlier

Welcome To JavaRanch......

[Kumaravadivel Subramani]

Hi,

Thanks for giving a nice document/link to understand basics of generics. But still I've doubts on wild characters with extends and super. Actually what is mean? when and where I need to use these?

Kindly give me a nice simple example of these to understand easily.

[Gari Jain]

There are a few such questions in ExamLab on Generics

specially about

i) <? extends B>
ii) <? super Animal>

explaining why we cannot add anything to the i) one
and what can we add to the ii)

You can read the explanation from there.

[Sumit Khurana]

Generic is only a compile time concept.....if you are clear with the basics of generic...then think now like you are a compiler.
void foo(List<? extends Animal> list){}

it means you can add anything which passes IS-A relationship with Animal like Cat,Dog.

In this method the compiler only knows about the Animal. Anything which you want, you can only do with the Animal.so,you can add only Animal.

void foo(List<? extends Animal> list){
list.add(new Animal()); //compile time error
}

thing what happens when we pass the Dog list...
List<Dog> d;
foo(d);

then the jvm will throw an exception-ClassCastException.because in Dog you can't add an Animal...so,to avoid these kind of excetion...compiler does not allow you to add anything...

and try to understand super like this