shampouya
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Is my understanding of a generic method correct?
I'm trying to summarize for myself what a generic method is. Am I correct here?
Let's say you are implementing a method that accepts a collection of objects and sorts the objects. The method signature specifies the specific type of object you will be storing in the collection. Let's say the method takes "Collection<myType>" as its parameter. You can call this method with any collection whose element type in this collection is a parent of myType. This is an example of a generic method.
Let's say you are implementing a method that accepts a collection of objects and sorts the objects. The method signature specifies the specific type of object you will be storing in the collection. Let's say the method takes "Collection<myType>" as its parameter. You can call this method with any collection whose element type in this collection is a parent of myType. This is an example of a generic method.
ASKER
So if the method took "Collection<Object>" as it's parameter, then a collection of String could be passed as the argument, because String is a child of Object. Am I correct?
Yes, you are correct.
The ooposite would not work:
imagine I have a method which relies on collection of Strings
It means that it may well happened theat somewhere inside the method
I may extract some element and say use method substring() of the String elelment
Now if you passed me collection of Objects - these elemets will not have such method as subvstring() - so the method cannot work for such collection
imagine I have a method which relies on collection of Strings
It means that it may well happened theat somewhere inside the method
I may extract some element and say use method substring() of the String elelment
Now if you passed me collection of Objects - these elemets will not have such method as subvstring() - so the method cannot work for such collection
However String has all those methods which Object has,
therefore if my method was devised for a collection of Objects - it means inside the method I could only apply to lelements of the collection only methods of class Object.
So if I now pass collection of Strings to thuis method everything will workbecause Strinngs do have all those methods which Objects have - so no problem may arise -
metods declared for Collection of Objects will worjk for collection of Strings also.
therefore if my method was devised for a collection of Objects - it means inside the method I could only apply to lelements of the collection only methods of class Object.
So if I now pass collection of Strings to thuis method everything will workbecause Strinngs do have all those methods which Objects have - so no problem may arise -
metods declared for Collection of Objects will worjk for collection of Strings also.
ASKER
Ok that makes sense. So can I think of a generic method as a method that:
a) takes type parameters
b) has the type specified in the angled brackets <> within the method signature
c) expects "exampleType" to be in its parameters but it will also accepts any children of exampleType because they inherit from exampleType
Am I correct here?
a) takes type parameters
b) has the type specified in the angled brackets <> within the method signature
c) expects "exampleType" to be in its parameters but it will also accepts any children of exampleType because they inherit from exampleType
Am I correct here?
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ASKER
wow that was easy
ASKER
thanks
So if myType is Object you can call with the Collection of String.
This is because it meas in your method you may be using methods of myType, and you may rely that any objects which inherit form myType
do have methods of myType class.