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Java generics generate only one compiled version of a generic class or function regardless of the number of parameterizing types used. Furthermore, the Java run-time environment does not need to know which parameterized type is used because the type information is validated at compile-time and is not included in the compiled code.
Unlike arrays (which are covariant in Java [2]), different instantiations of a generic type are not compatible with each other, not even explicitly. [2] For example, the declarations Generic<Supertype> superGeneric; Generic<Subtype> subGeneric; will cause the compiler to report conversion errors for both castings (Generic<Subtype>)superGeneric and (Generic<Supertype>)subGeneric.
Although similar to generics in Java, .NET generics do not apply type erasure, [26]: 208–209 but implement generics as a first class mechanism in the runtime using reification. This design choice provides additional functionality, such as allowing reflection with preservation of generic types, and alleviating some of the limits of erasure ...
Java is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is a general-purpose programming language intended to let programmers write once, run anywhere (), [16] meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Java without the need to recompile. [17]
As a result, often the clone() method can only be used if the actual class of an object is known, which is contrary to the abstraction principle of using the most generic type possible. For example, if one has a List reference in Java, one cannot invoke clone() on that reference because List specifies no public clone() method.
For example, java.io.InputStream is a fully qualified class name for the class InputStream which is located in the package ... {// The class itself is not generic, ...
Typically a generic function is an instance of a class that inherits both from function and standard-object. Thus generic functions are both functions (that can be called with and applied to arguments) and ordinary objects. The book The Art of the Metaobject Protocol explains the implementation and use of CLOS generic functions in detail.
Formal generic parameters are used in the definition of generic classes. In the example below, the class HASH_TABLE is declared as a generic class which has two formal generic parameters, G representing data of interest and K representing the hash key for the data: