Generics

Generics are somewhat similar to Templates in C++ and were added to Java in 2004 as part of J2SE 5.0 to add more compile-time type-safety.

Example:

public class Box<T> {
	private T t; // T stands for "Type"
	public void add(T t) {
		this.t = t;
	}
	public T get() {
		return t;
	}

	public <W extends Number & MyInterface> void inspect(W w){
		System.out.println("T: " + t.getClass().getName());
		System.out.println("W: " + w.getClass().getName());
	}
}

The above is used as:

Box<Integer>integerBox;

So, in the above, T is a Generic and so is W.
W has further restrictions imposed on it such that it can only be passed as classes/interfaces that are derived from Number and MyInterface

Type-Erasure

HashMap<String, String> strMap = new HashMap<String, String>();
HashMap<Integer, Integer> intMap = new HashMap<Integer, Integer>();
System.out.println (intMap.getClass() == strMap.getClass())