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POWhy should I care that Java doesn't have reified generics?
 

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  1. POWhy should I care that Java doesn't have reified generics?
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    <p>This came up as a question I asked in an interview recently as something the candidate wished to see added to the Java language. It's commonly-identified as a pain that Java doesn't have <a href="http://gafter.blogspot.com/2006/11/reified-generics-for-java.html" rel="noreferrer">reified generics</a> but, when pushed, the candidate couldn't actually tell me the sort of things that he could have achieved were they there.</p> <p>Obviously because raw types are allowable in Java (and unsafe checks), it is possible to subvert generics and end up with a <code>List&lt;Integer&gt;</code> that (for example) actually contains <code>String</code>s. This clearly could be rendered impossible were type information reified; <em>but there must be more than this</em>!</p> <p>Could people post examples of things that <strong>they would really want to do</strong>, were reified generics available? I mean, obviously you could get the type of a <code>List</code> at runtime - but what would you do with it?</p> <pre><code>public &lt;T&gt; void foo(List&lt;T&gt; l) { if (l.getGenericType() == Integer.class) { //yeah baby! err, what now? </code></pre> <p><strong>EDIT</strong>: A quick update to this as the answers seem mainly to be concerned about the need to pass in a <code>Class</code> as a parameter (for example <code>EnumSet.noneOf(TimeUnit.class)</code>). I was looking more for something along the lines of <em>where this just isn't possible</em>. For example:</p> <pre><code>List&lt;?&gt; l1 = api.gimmeAList(); List&lt;?&gt; l2 = api.gimmeAnotherList(); if (l1.getGenericType().isAssignableFrom(l2.getGenericType())) { l1.addAll(l2); //why on earth would I be doing this anyway? </code></pre>
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    1. COWould this mean that you could get the class of a generic type at runtime? (if so, I have an example!)
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    2. CO@James B basically.
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    3. COI think most of the desire with reifiable generics are from people who use generics primarily with collections, and want those collections to behave more like arrays.
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