Trail: Learning the Java Language

Lesson: Generics (Updated)

The Java Tutorials have been written for JDK 8. Examples and practices described in this page don't take advantage of improvements introduced in later releases and might use technology no longer available. See JDK Release Notes for information about new features, enhancements, and removed or deprecated options for all JDK releases.

Why Use Generics?

In a nutshell, generics enable types (classes and interfaces) to be parameters when defining classes, interfaces and methods. Much like the more familiar formal parameters used in method declarations, type parameters provide a way for you to re-use the same code with different inputs. The difference is that the inputs to formal parameters are values, while the inputs to type parameters are types.

Code that uses generics has many benefits over non-generic code: