I'm reading about Collections at
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/collections/interfaces/set.html I like the tutorial because it is updated for J2SE 5, including generics.
But I don't understand this syntax:
The tutorial says this is a generic method that returns a Set of the same generic type as the one passed in. I don't understand what the first <E> in the method signature means. (public static
<E>)
I would have thought the syntax would be:
Without the first <E>. That, in my mind, would be a static method called removeDups that takes a Collection of type E, and returns a Set of type E.
What does "public static
<E> Set<E> removeDups(Collection<E> c)" mean?