Java 7 for Absolute Beginners

C H A P T E R  15

Generics and Regular Expressions

Readers who already know Java may very well ask why these two topics are together in the same chapter. The answer is that they both involve pattern matching. A generic specifier (also known as a parameter) is a pattern that code must match in order to use a particular block of code (which might be an interface, a class, a method, or other things). Regular Expressions, on the other hand, use patterns to select substrings within strings. In both cases, the pattern restricts the available selections. Both have additional benefits as well, which we'll get to next.

Generics

Generics offer a way to specify the kind of objects that a class, variable, or method can use. The most common use of generics ...