Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The real difference between List<Object> and List, illuminated at last

Suppose you're a store clerk, and a customer asks you, "what kinds of credit cards do you accept?"

The difference between List<Object> and List is basically the difference between answering this question "we accept all kinds," and answering it, "duuuuhhhhhhh?"

13 comments:

  1. Ah, but what about List<Object> and List<?>? Or am I just trying to take this metaphor too far!?

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  2. List<?> is harder to explain since it's not the specific type of any instance, only the type of a _reference_; the type that can refer to List<Foo> for any Foo. I don't know how to work it into the analogy. :)

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  3. What about List<? extends Object>? Would that be like accepting Discover?

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  4. Surely List<? extends Object> is equivalent to List<?>. As I understand it, List<?> is just a shorthand that omits the extends clause, and so it defaults to Object as the root of the class hierarchy.

    How we work it into the analogy though is beyond me!

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  5. This is way outside of the analogy, but

    List<? super Object>

    is a mind-bender.

    It is a zen thing: the store is open with employees, but doesn't accept anything.

    Actually, having compiled an example, it may accept Object. Is Object a super of itself?

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  6. Yes, the true meaning of "super" in a wildcard expression is "assignable from". Likewise, "extends" here means "assignable to". These relationships are indeed reflexive.

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